The Hunt For The Missing Hercules 63-7789

Ahhh, the pub, hauling-in Alison and Annette…..happy days!

I still think the TIGHAR comparisons are justified.

How much of that GoFundMe money was spent buying pints for old salts in the hope that, once well lubricated, they might recall the time they hauled an Allison in their nets? :very_drunk:

Shame about those pictures being held back. I suspect that the hub, tyre or remaining tread detail would instantly answer the test question. But I suppose if you’ve got a golden goose then it’s worth squeezing a bit more……..

Don’t expect to see the pictures any time soon.

”Grahame Knott, from Deeper Dorset, posted on social media that some aviation enthusiasts doubted they had really found the plane.

He said they were sure they had found the right aircraft, but they were not releasing any images yet.

He wrote: ‘The images are the only bargaining power we have when it comes to negotiating a deal with a filmmaker, which we are going to need to help fund the next stage.’ Daily Mail 07.01.19

ZRX61 said, “Anyone else find it odd that they didn’t release one photo of the wreckage they claim to have filmed?

Paging Mr Gillespie….”

Gillespie has already latched on to Mr. Knott, saying, “Yes, Grahame did a great job locating what’s left of the C-130. We discussed it at some length when Ernie LeRoy, Mark Smith and I met him in Weymouth earlier this month. There are still many questions to be answered about the circumstances of that loss.

Grahame and I instantly recognized that we are kindred spirits. He’s now helping us with the Glenn Miller Project.“

This should be … interesting. On the one hand we have a man who spent a relatively modest amount of money (including bar tabs), used low-tech equipment, a lot of brute force labor, and found what he was looking for.

I am at a loss as to why he would even consider partnering with a man who has spent millions of dollars, used lots of different high tech equipment (and wanted to use lots more if he could get it), has not found a single thing he’s looked for in the past 30 years, and along the way made more than $2 million for himself.

I think you’re reading too much into it,

“we spotted a wheel sticking out the sand, then a section of wing with rivets, it just got bigger and bigger”

I read it as the saw a wheel, then found a wing section. Time will tell whether it’s the correct aircraft.

Would this be the right time to point out that the C-130s wheels don’t retract into the wings or am I reading too much into the story? :rolleyes:

In fairness to the BBC headline says it ” COULD “ It doesn’t say it IS the aircraft ”

Not a problem- The BBC can say what they like- I never take anything that a news team declare at face value and I don’t have to square my intellectual approach with clickbait journalism. I once had to deal with a set of relatives in the Intensive Care Unit in which I worked who screamed at me because I hadn’t told them that their relative had died and that they had to read it in the Sun Newspaper. My counter argument was that the reason that I hadn’t told them was because despite what The Sun had printed their relative was at that point still alive on my ITU. That is not the only major hassle I have had with headline-grabbing journalism. The BBC headline might be right or wrong. There is little in the article to say one way or another. It is headline grabbing for a news team. Journalists only care about the headline- “They have found something that might be…..” just doesn’t cut it on the BBC (or , let’s be honest, any major news source) Front Page. It always has to be “They have Found”. TIGHAR, anyone? That tomorrow it turns out to be wrong is yesterdays garbage and forgotten. My reading of the article is that the group searching for the plane have found a wreck that seems to fit the bill, and you could argue that if it looks like a C130 there shouldn’t be many lost in that area. It looks pretty right according to the search team but the dive conditions were not good enough to say for certain in detail. So my approach is that they sought a wreck and found one. They think that it looks like a C130 and that narrows the options down a lot. So. Regroup and test the hypothesis that this is
a) really a C130
b) if this is a C130 is there any possibility that there might be two contenders for identity
c) as far as possible confirm the identity of this wreck from primary data
d) try to identify why this plane crashed

If you want to offer other questions that might need answering I am sure that the search team would value your input. For myself I am sure that my list of hypotheses are of no issues to them. As for applying the scientific method to this, I will happily accept critique or amplification of my thoughts.

Science vs BBC. No contest. BBC shouts and forgets. Science listens, and always rechecks the data. Yesterdays hypothesis is either todays move on best guess theory or rejected for now unless someone comes up with a better theory in which case we go back down the ladder and start again. Proof not clickbait headlines, please. The scientific method is to put up a hypothesis. You can never be certain until you test the hypothesis and you always hold equipoise- whatever the answer is, whether it agrees with your hopes or preconceptions, the answer is always what it is. You look hard at it and rebuild your world view, and then move on the the next question.

steve611 – you seem to be telling us that a scientific approach is now required in order to discover the truth. Fair enough. But how do you square that with the BBC headline that declares the aircraft has been found? This is what it says:

Found: The plane wreck that could solve a 50-year-old mystery – BBC News. Seems pretty emphatic to me. So is the BBC headline wrong?

Sabrejet- I accept your point. On the other hand they seem to have found a wreckage (let’s ignore the negative comments on this thread) that fits the narrative as far as they can tell. I accept that what little has been posted won’t convince anyone with a cynical take on these things. I count myself in that group but I am a trained scientist, so I work on the idea that every hypothesis is to be considered but it must stand up to scrutiny.. They have said that it looks right. END OF THE STORY FOR NOW. At some point they intend to dive the wreck and get more detail and better views. This is the scientific method. It looks good, but we have to further test the hypothesis. When more data is available then we can test several hypotheses. 1- is this the right aircraft? 2 carry out a formal aircraft crash investigation.

I’m not usually this cynical but there’s an awful lot of assumptions in Mr Knott’s story (together with quite a few pints of Doom Bar I should say). If he has indeed found it then he can return here with the biggest ‘I told you so’ medal ever awarded (by Moggy) and he should get working on Glenn Miller’s trombone at once. But somehow I think we’re in for a disappointment when that big wing turns out to be from a Halifax/Stirling/B17/whatever……..

I still don’t know how they think they’ll know if it was shot down or not: kudos for finding it but I suspect that’s pretty much the end of the story.

Credit where it’s due if the wreck has indeed been located. Interested to see the follow-up on the initial finding.

“Instead the plan is for the Deeper Dorset team to dive down to the wreck site in spring, when the underwater visibility in the Channel will have improved, and to video the wreck from all angles. This will enable a computerised, 3D-image of the crash site to be constructed, and studied by air accident investigators.”

Anyone else find it odd that they didn’t release one photo of the wreckage they claim to have filmed?

Paging Mr Gillespie….

So we can read all about it anyway in the press.Well done them for persevering .A sad story whatever the truth is.

So this seems to have been released to the press: Found: The plane wreck that could solve a 50-year-old mystery – BBC News

If this is correct, then hats off to the team that have found it ! Surely this must have been like finding a specific needle in a haystack full of needles?

Having personally searched for a crash site for 25+ years before finding it, I do know perseverance can pay off – though I would have preferred the 10 years of talking to fisherman in pubs, than the countless weekends of methodical grid-searching with a Foerster!

It seemed a bit odd that they started the funding process to find the C130 near Alderney.. & then announced they’d found something that wasn’t a C130 in Poole harbor? They were a bit miffed when I mentioned that given the 30ft tide in that area, that anything that crashed there was more than likely now somewhere closer to Brazil than France.

“We will not bother the forum with updates any more.”

I’d say the situation was unchanged then.

The really sad thing is that all of this, clouds the human aspect to the story, a sad and needless end to an obviously capable man.

So it’s OK to call long term contributors here “keyboard warriors” but not OK to call a flounce a flounce?

Any other rules we should know about?

Moggy