Looks like there’s something in the water in the bottom left of that pic.
Maybe a landing craft or something?

There are plenty ship wrecks in that area. Inside the atoll you can also see a few.

Close to what i posted just a minute ago, but since its the “Victorious Fatherland War Museum” and not a aircraft/aerospace museum, I’m pretty sure they have used wrecks on purpose.

No point of showing the enemy to have been strong (or posessing better technology).

This might not mean, that they have better aircraft somewhere else, just that I don’t think the wrecks on display mean anything.

Hi Mark,

You are absolutly right.

The merit of the Fossett search is of no matter regarding wreck searching.
I for my part, will refrain from pissing in the future 😉

And regarding the armchair searching, you are right again.

I have already found a number of interesting aircraft. Not in the pacific, but around airports/fields in the less traveled parts of the world. Quite a few have their own little boneyard and for anyone wanting to search on Google Earth, thats a perfect place to start.

This forum can always be used for identification and to see if the bird is “known”.

Someone in another forum I read, said something quite true about warbird restoration – The main source is not pacific jungles, but the junkyards.

I seem put to the wall by unconfirmed and secret knowledge about US military involvement in the Steve Fossett search :rolleyes:

Despite personally knowing the person who found one of the aircraft (although not through GE), but i guess that AC was found by the P-3 too.

Here is a map of Betio Island, it is the southernmost island in the atoll of Tarawa and the scene of the main Japanese base and subsequent amphibious assault by the Marines. The map is A3 and would not fit properly on my scanner – taken from “US Army in World War 2” it has the most outstanding battle maps I have seen. It would appear to be fairly easy to compare the original maps and aerial photographs to current GE images
Paul

Here is the GE image from Betio island. As you can see its pretty build up.
There are a number of islands/atolls in the area, each with their own airfield. The airfield i have listed as Tawara airfield, is on an island to the north. Obviously they can’t all be Tarawa airfield.

I have an article where the CAP search leader state that those 5 aircraft were found by GE searchers.

The actual sequence of events:

The boxes containing the aircraft were flagged in google earth (by a large % of users).

The Hilton team (Baron Hilton was leading the private search team) evaluated those boxes and forwarded the position to CAP.

CAP flew a search on the location.

There were no P-3 involved, I don’t know where you have this infomation, but its simply not true. We had very close contact with the Hilton search team and with CAP. What they did use, was the CAP ARCHER system. However, that did not find those planes (unless it was after the location was reported through GE).

We are very much aware, that certain parts of CAP had their own spin on the events, as they did not like this kind of “competition”. But there are also people in CAP, who see the possibility of GE searching.

The main problem in that search, was the lack of training. They had people report trucks, aircraft in flight, and other objects which proved false positives.

I never said the Fw 189 was found on Google Earth, just that it would have been seen by GE searchers. I have also said, that any pacific search would be organised after Squadron records and loss reports. Neither did i say, that it would revolutionize wreck-hunting. I just said that it could be a tool for people how would like to search, but can’t/won’t go to the location. I also said (and proved to some extend) that it would be possible to find a WWII aircraft by usuing Google Earth.

There is no reason to keep mentioning, that “its a jungle out there”. I’m pretty well aware of the jungle, and how you can’t see an aircraft (or anything else)) underneath 60 years of jungle growth. Its just not all jungle. Naturally a GE search would be in areas, where it would be possible to see something. I’m not going to search the Pacific ocean either (and im rather surpriced nobody have pointed that out yet).

Your last paragraph hits the nail – Its fun to search on GE!

Well, yes, of sorts…bearing in mind that the image quality he bought would probably have been superior to Google Earth.

Unless he had VERY good connections, it would be worse.

Goole earth provides the best resolution outside state organisations. They provide the image resolution CIA and other agencies had in the 70’s and 80’s.

The stories about reading headlines from space are just stories.

Unless he had access to a keyhole sat (and they don’t use let people juse keyholes) he would have had lower resolution that standard Google earth.

To be short; he could not have had access to a keyhole and thus not have had better images.

Mondariz,

I think we all agree that if you restrict your search to areas where known losses are listed you may well find something new, but finding that wreck in the Russian wilderness via GE scanning would still be like finding a needle in a haystack IMHO.

Regards

Mark Pilkington

Absolute truth, the needle and haystack analogy.

I never said I would be searching randomly throughout the pacific. There are areas more interesting than others. “Unfortunatly” most known areas have been searched by ground teams, although this doesn’t mean nothing new can be found there.

What this really amounts to, is an armchair project for people who like to think, that an unknown plane can be found on the pacific islands – no more, no less.

Its a past-time like plane-spotting (although you have to be a pretty lousy plane-spotter not to spot anything).