Thank you SaturnV for the posting and comments.
I first did not take into account the findings of the Brazilian SAR before they recovered AF 447's first body and wreckage because this sequence of events was badly documented and I could not rely on clear reports. Too many contradictory news were published about the first findings. So, my presentation was only based on post 06 June facts without taking into account anything before.
But now that you are showing us the 06-06-2009 reports of Brazilian SAR,
a much closer look at the 02 June Brazilian researches become obvious if we are taking into account where the crash location could be roughly infered by the 06-10 June surface sea drift.
Here is the picture again without SAR zones of 02 June:
The three items discovered were:
1. Poltrona = seat
2. Pedaços de metal = piece of metal
3. Mancha de combustível = strain of gazoline
They were spotted from the sky and, as no ship was close enough, they could not be recovered. Then, the following days, the bad weather made the SAR difficult and this specific stuff could not be located again. Other 'wreckage' was spotted and identified as sea garbage (orange buoy, fuel traces, wood palet, etc) but we can see also that it was far away from this place on the other pictures. I remember well the contradictory declarations from the authorities about the first findings, some were positive (I guess the spotting crew), and others doubted about it because nothing was recovered (specifically the blue seat). So, maybe this air crew was mocked for no reasons as this map is showing now:
An estimation of the coordinates based on sea relief for those three items give:
- seat (2.077, -29.800)
- metal piece (1.895, -30.080)
- gazoline (1.745, -30.035)
I picked the seat:
a) this is the best described item unlikely to be something else if spoted from a recon aircraft. Beside, there was several 'fuel strain' and 'piece of metal' spoted in several other places which were not from AF 447.
b) If other items would belong to AF 447, their specifics won't match very well the drift of the bodies.
c) An aircraft seat will match pretty close a body in water as it will be nearly fully submerged and won't be affected that much by the winds.
The distance from d06 to the seat is 180 km. As an approximation, (no spotting hour is available) four days between the spotting and d06 recovery which make an average 0.52 m/s drift. This is in the range of possible following the SHOM tables:
This map is showing a slice of the drift at 30.5W 2.5N to 30.5W 3.5N on 04-06-2009 from 1.000 meters deep to the surface (vert. axis) and the distance in km is on the horizontal axis. It is a slice of the sea at this point in the red circle shown on the second map. This one is maping the surface drift. As we can see, the 'surface' drift is fairly deep, it is not only a few meters deep layer.
Using the same method as before, it is now possible to roughly estimate a new possible crash zone 24NM farther (24 hrs @ 0.52 m/s). The heading will be @ 336 to d06.
- second hypothesis crash zone coordinates (1.708, -29.630)
Now, adding a new course (yellow) from S. Peter Rocks crossing the crash zone, it bring us directly to the 0214Z flightplan spot. I didn't change the U-turn as nobody knows actually what was the real course after 0210Z and the turn back could have started from this point or later, so its shape is fairly unknow and all this above is purely hypothetical, only based on the wreckage spots, and not on what happened really on board. It would be too early to speculate with the little information we have.
A general view of the wreckage is more telling and of course, the drift is vectorized as the flow may be much more turbulent in reality than pictured by this:
I'll answer other questions later about the bodies sinking or not. Beside, sorry for the typos and grammar (I need to add a 'h' to hypothesis and 't' to spotted on my maps!) due to my poor English skills.
S~
Olivier