Post 1038 and Ark Royal
mm43,
I have been following this thread with interest, thank you for your efforts, but I was startled to see the image from the C&C Hugin Survey. I directed the search for the Ark Royal . The wreck was originaly located by a surface mounted multibeam on another vessel, Odin Finder, and then confirmed by the survey from C&C's AUV on Rig Supporter. It was of course in much shallower water than the AF447, just over 1,000 meters. From what I know the basic equipment of the REMUS AUV's being used now is more or less the same as the HUGIN 3000 we used then, but of course with eight years improvement in signal processing. It might be interesting to see how the returns were rendered in Fledermause. The image you reproduced was combined from a variety of passes over the wreck at different altitudes and headings. Subsequently we captured video of the Swordfish and deck lift. What you can see is the underside rib bracings.
I notice that many posters are discussing the question of whether the debris will be widely dispersed or not. The Ark Royal was around 700 feet long, and weighed about 23000 tons, and was sunk because of one torpedo hit in the hull. She capsized before sinking, and obviously broke up on the surface because we found the wreck in two pieces, with a large amount of debris from the flight deck and Island, and a field of Fulmar aircraft from the hangar deck. The main part of the wreck was seperated from the bow section by around 800 metres, and I have always thought that this was quite a puzzling distance bearing in mind that the two pieces only had 1025 metres to descend from surface to sea bed. Its my own view that given the impact on the sea, and the depth of over 4000 metres to sea bed, debris from AF447 will be spread over quite a wide area.
Thanks again for your patient work mm43.
sf41