KARYPM%SJUVM@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Paul M. Karagianis) (05/17/91)
From: "Paul M. Karagianis" <KARYPM%SJUVM@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU> There were reports on last nights news that treasure hunters had found five Avengers off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, presumably the unit that "vanished in the Bermuda triangle" at the end of WWII. I don't recall, and am not all that interested in the exact details of this popular ghost story, which must be pretty well known since it's included in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" with almost no background. What I found interesting was that "all five aircraft were found within two miles of each other". As an uninformed layman on the subject of survival strategies, I could use some explanation of what appears to be a suicidal choice. The variation in fuel consumption between several medium range aircraft operated to exhaustion would suggest that when the first one went down, the remaining four would have an average of several minutes fuel remaining; obviously they chose to remain together. I don't understand why five little life rafts clumped together in the middle of the ocean would be any more likely to be discovered than one. As a (probably sub-optimal) alternative, wouldn't it make more sense to designate the first guy dry as a hub and immediately split the remaining four N, E, W and S? In that case they would still have four independent low probability chances of making land, air or sea contact plus they would be spread over a much wider area, decreasing the odds against rescue units. Locating any of the four would give a pretty good fix on the hub: "yeah, he's exactly 14 minutes magnetic south" (I'm making a possibly bogus assumption that ditching is a *relatively* low risk hazard), and reduce the search area to rather small pie slices on the remaining three. Thank for the consideration... -Kary.
Charles.K.Scott@dartvax.dartmouth.edu (Charles K. Scott) (05/23/91)
From: Charles.K.Scott@dartvax.dartmouth.edu (Charles K. Scott) KARYPM%SJUVM@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU (Paul M. Karagianis) writes: > Locating any of the > four would give a pretty good fix on the hub: "yeah, he's exactly 14 > minutes magnetic south" (I'm making a possibly bogus assumption that > ditching is a *relatively* low risk hazard), and reduce the search area > to rather small pie slices on the remaining three. Ditching as a group was operational procedure or at least that's the way it usually went during WW II for many good reasons. 1. You can't be assured of a good ditching and saving all the components stored away for survival, so ditching together pools the resources. 2. You're right in that it is very difficult to see a single raft on a sparkling sea, but having all rafts tied together does make a bigger target to look for. 3. Usually, no one is sure where they are when they ditch, that's often why they're ditching, Once in the water, anything can and will happen that will make the original ditching positions completely eroneous. Currents, winds, local squals etc. all effect the individual members differently scattering all so badly that finding everyone is unlikely. 4. No one can be sure they will come out of a ditching in good shape, it's a violent stop after all. Someone will likely be injured. If you stick together it might be possible to assist the wounded, or prevent someone from sliding out of the raft and possibly drowning 5. Just having a buddy nearby can be a great relief at times, it's a good moral booster, and when so many men died at sea through drowning and exposure, who knows what mysterious factors are at work keeping the spirit alive. 6. Finally, the squadrons were tought to act as a group. That was their training since joining the Navy. Acts of individualism were not encouraged. An example was one courageous Navy pilot who, while flying with his squadron while they searched for the Japenese fleet at Midway, gesticulated and flew alongside the flight leader for a half an hour attempting to get the flight turned around to head back to the US fleet because they had little gas left and had to at least get close to the fleet to get spotted in the water. When he was ignored, the man turned back alone. This made the commanding officer furious, although he in turn had to bow to the obvious and turn back shortly thereafter. None of the pilots made it back to the carriers. All ditched South of the fleet. Here is an interesting point, they didn't all ditch in the same place. Some had gas and contiunued searching for the fleet. Those who stayed together were found several days later, but some of the pilots who flew on were never seen again. Corky Scott