Prospector / Greybeard #468:
It has to be said that the data-recovery guys did a fantastic job (putting aside the question of missing atlases). As for the 700 feet altitude, could that have been at the point they reached the base of Mt Erebus, just before the GPWS sounded? Or maybe they forgot to reset the altimeter?
Desert Dingo #467:
Descending below FL160 without getting a radar fix – Can’t speak for Prospector, but I'v given up on that argument, even though it was the one advanced by Sir Rochford Hughes. The objection to such a descent is that the AINS might be wrong, so you might hit the high ground. But if you’re VMC, you’ll see the high ground before you hit it (you think) – which is basically what Bryan Abraham has been saying.
Desert Dingo asks for an explanation as to why Collins was told at the briefing that his nav track “went over Mt Erebus”. Before getting into that, it has to accepted that Capt. Wilson said something about the nav track. He could not have managed to completely avoid the subject. So what did he say? It depends on what he believed. If Capt. Wilson was in on the alleged navigation conspiracy, then he would have told the crew that the final waypoint was in middle of the sound, near the Dailey Islands. If he was not in on the alleged navigation conspiracy, then he would have said that the final waypoint was at McMurdo Station. He would not have said both. It’s either one or the other.
The evidence supports the proposition that Capt. Wilson told the crew that the final waypoint was at McMurdo Station, for the following reasons:
(a) He said so.
(b) None of the three surviving pilots said he didn’t say so.
(c) Capt. S’s conduct of his flight is consistent with a McMurdo Station waypoint.
(d) Mahon’s navigation conspiracy theory is tenuous, and in any event, if a conspiracy occurred, it was conducted by the nav section. There is no evidence that Capt. Wilson might have been in on it.
(e) The NDB letdown diagram is consistent with a final waypoint at McMurdo Station. The fact that the NDB wasn’t working does not affect the point. Capt. Wilson had conducted three previous briefings, when the NDB was working, and when the same diagram was used.
So let’s assume that Capt. Wilson told the crew that the final waypoint was at McMurdo Station. It does not necessarily follow that he told them that the nav track was over Erebus. We know, with the benefit of hindsight, that a track from Cape Hallett to McMurdo Station goes over Erebus. But we only know that because we have seen a topo map with the track marked on it. The only topo map available at the briefing was a photocopy of the inset to NZMC135. This photocopy does not show Cape Hallett, so it’s not possible to picture the line of the track using that map. In other words, the pilots at the briefing might not have been aware that a nav track to McMurdo Station would be over Erebus.
SR71 #466: What’s the point of all this? If the crew of TE901 were told that the final waypoint was at McMurdo Station, they should have been alerted to a potential issue when they discovered that it wasn’t. I’m not suggested they were insane or suicidal. I’m suggesting they were careless, in that they disregarded the potential issue concerning the final waypoint, and went ahead without checking. That was a clear-cut error, in my opinion.