Originally Posted by Chris Scott
FlexibleResponse stated
here that “
you also need to take into account that the human body does not float in seawater until about 72 hours after death. Then there should be some allowance for the time from establishing positive buoyancy to float from the wreckage at the bottom of the ocean up to the surface. Again some allowance should be made for the average sea current during the ascent time…” (etc.)
Not sure if FlexibleResponse’s assertion has been challenged since but, if not, it put the crash zone back into the circle of 40nm radius.
Well Chris, FlexibleResponse's assumption of 72 hrs after death for body surfacing is not valid at sea into such context:
A very large majority of people are naturally buoyant into sea water while a majority of them will also sink into non salted water. Moreover, people which are not naturally buoyant will sink into such a great depth that they would possibly never surface again due to very high pressure (slow decomposition -very low temp- would not overcome such pressure). Remember that the ocean floor is 2,000-4,000 meters deep around this zone.
As a matter of fact, all models used for locating the wreckage (US, Russian, French, etc.) were considering that the recovered bodies drifted at the surface from the crash time.
S~
Olivier