Pacific Wrecks Forum

The flight was on course. What happened? What went wrong? Many investigators think Amelia was not knowledgeable about her radio equipment. And because of Amelias' lack of knowledge, Amelia is often cited as responsible for the failure of the world flight. That is only partially correct. The followin...

The most recent news is that the Nautilus lost the ROVs as the tether came undone. That recovery time is going to extend the timeline considerably. Til then I'll continue with other subjects. There are arguments if the world flight saw the ocean tug Ontario, assigned to provide a mid flight checkpoi...

I am always too optimistic. Falkor is headed back to mainland US. The "Phoenix Islands" expedition is over and turned out to be not a remake of the 2017 expedition but a limited Howland/Baker Island expedition only. Not gonna get that bettor picture. http://aquariusradar.com/FalkorHeadinghome.png Al...

SOI Falkor seems to be returning to Honolulu. Maybe equipment trouble.

SOI Falkor continues the biological survey and research north of the Phoenix Islands. The OET EV Nautilus has left the San Pedro/LA port to start the 2021 explorations. The ship will hug the West Coast of North America from British Columbia to Baja California for a variety of explorations before hea...

The SOI ship Falkor has been at work with the biological survey in and around Howland and Baker islands and the shallower seamounts south and west of that location. Looks like they may work their way south to look at the western most of the Phoenix group, Nikumaroro. Just a guess. The blog that vari...

SOI Falkor is at work with biological survey at depth about five hundred miles north of Orona. Interested viewers can follow the Falkor and the ROV dives with live video https://schmidtocean.org/rv-falkor/status/status-navigation/ . The location map is annotated with the 157 line that is noted in th...

The SOI research vessel Falkor has departed Honolulu to start the Phoenix Islands expedition.

The SOI research vessel Falkor has a HQ60 UAV on board. It can be launched from the ship's deck. I wrote to the SOI and suggested the HQ60 be used to take photos at the Electra location: W 172.1575 S 04.4986 in the Orona lagoon. With good surface conditions, a bettor image might be obtained. The Fal...

Measurements of the L10E in the Orona lagoon are done with the Google Earth ruler. And then the measurement is corrected for the refraction of water/air interface. The virtual image is easy to illustrate:

The 2021 summer expeditions to the central Pacific will include both the O cean E xploration T rust ship Nautilus and the S chmidt O ceanographic I nstitute ship Falkor. Nautilus is to concentrate on a deep water search around Howland which I am sure is going to fail; I hope to interest Dr. Ballard ...

Another image of the Musick memorial at Kanton. I think this photo is by Aras Mardosa about 1976 just before the US DoD left the island.

Both Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan had experience with extreme long range flying. Noonan had recent experience just 2 years before with the harrowing 21 hour return flight from Hawaii as navigator aboard the S-42 Pan Am Clipper. After Musick sat the big sea plane down on the bay at San Francisco/Al...

With regard to the AE an FN mystery, a question always arises when Japanese capture theories are discussed; what could possibly be the motive for kidnapping the fliers? The Orona-Saipan theory finds motive in the Japanese implementation of the naval strategy that American's call the Mahan principle....

No good explanation exists for the US Navy failing to make a more intensive search of the Phoenix Islands as it was known that co=pilot and navigator Fred Noonan had knowledge and experience with landing in the quiet waters of the Pacific aboard the big Pan Am Clipper sea planes of the era (S-42). F...