I am old and I have traveled a lot in the Sahara desert with
wehicle off road and I can tell you that the desert is an open cemetery ….. many bones are there!
Now I do not want to insist over with my theories on the research of Copping .

I appreciate the mission of Qattara of June 2012 regarding the visit to the wreck, but the discovery of the bones
is a fact without credible evidence!
Now we are on standby….. MOD says nothing , Qattara says nothing !!
We must go forward and I would like to study what direction Copping went on foot after landing because
I think he has walked a lot more than 8 km.
I ask you who are experts in flight:
– A pilot is able to navigate by the sun without instrumets ?
– A pilot can fly for two hours, not knowing where to go?
– At the flight altitude of Copping he can see and recognize an oasis or a village at a distance of 40 km?

” It may be a masterful piece of deduction or a complete fluke”

I suppose the question you have to ask yourself is, which way does a man walk when he is already hopelessly lost?

If I remember correctly from the original thread, Copping refused to change course, despite various attempts by his “wing man” to get him to do so.

Suggestions were that his compass was faulty, that being so, would it have remained faulty after the crash or indeed totally U/S, and what about the standby compass?

I think this is the right approach to the problem. Put aside for a moment the track bones and try to imagine which directions ! We consider that in flight probably Copping decided what direction to take because from there he saw Farafra oasis (Km.40) or other…! I think he left the plane in good physical condition and knowing where to go! The deduction of this is because around the plane there are no things or signs of a long bivouac.

In my post 158, I did not want to open an anthropological question about the Bedouins of the Sahara, but pointed out that a young person with a minimum of food and water could survive and walk many miles in the desert !

It is true that 70 years have passed, and probably many visits to the wreck, but it is strange that was not found any personal item of Copping and around no trace of cards , tools or bottles ….. everything was in order and the canopy closed.
My opinion is that he waited maybe one night then took the voluntary decision to seek salvation on their own feet. Probably took with him everything that could be useful for survival and made a kind of backpack with harness to be able to walk better.