Some new information about suspected MH370 debris found in Africa:
1) Last month I wrote about a photograph taken of the “Rolls Royce” fragment three months before it was discovered by Neels Kruger and turned over to the authorities. This double discovery struck me as such a remarkable coincidence that I reached out to the man who took the photograph, Schalk Lückhoff, a 73-year-old retired doctor who lives about an hour away from the discovery site. I was fortunate enough to catch Dr Lückhoff just before he left on a monthlong photo safari to Kruger National Park. At the start of the interview I was under the impression that Neels Kruger found the piece the second time at Mossel Bay, 10 km from the Klein Brak River, but as Dr Lückhoff makes clear, this is not the case; Kruger also found the piece at at the mouth of Klein Brak river, about 250 m from where Lückhoff had photographed it. (Klein Brak is within the Mossel Bay municipality, hence the confusion.) Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.
SL: I belong to a local photographic club… and I was on my way to photograph fast-flowing water as the lagoon was emptying into the sea, and this was early morning, in fact I saw on my picture the exact time I took it was twenty minutes past seven on the 23rd of December. And I was the first one on the beach and I walked toward the river, and there was this clean piece of beach where no one had walked and I saw this object lying in the middle of it, and I just thought, well, it was probably just an old notice board or something, so I just took a picture in passing and I went on because I was in a hurry to get to the river, you see. And then when I came back later in the day it was gone, but by then there has been a high tide as well and I now, in retrospect I thought that this high tide pushed it into the river, the lagoon, or there’s also lots of holidaymakers that time of year, somebody might have picked it up and carried it into the lagoon, I don’t know… And then what happend was I never paid attention to this because I didn’t recognize it for what it was, as I say I was more interested in the pictures I was going to take, and the result was that about three months later there was a news thingy with the piece that Neels Kruger picked up [specifically, an article by Eugene Gunning in the Afrikaans-language Netwerk 24], and looking at this I thought, ‘This looks very familiar,’ and I went through, went back and looked through my pictures, and I found it there full of barnacles. And that’s the story.
JW: So then you reached out to Eugene Gunning?
SL: Yes, in fact I didn’t know who to contact because I immediately realized this might be important puzzle, or a piece in the puzzle, you see, so I contacted Eugene and he put me on to Neels, and very interesting chat about it, and he put me onto the Australian, what’s it, Transport Safety…
JW: ATSB.
SL: And I contacted them and sent them one of my pictures and they took it from there. They said to me that this was rather important, because it actually puts the date of actually three months earlier, because Neels only found it three months after I did. And what puzzled them was why there were no any marine life on this one, and of course I could explain that, because there’s a whole host of seabirds that nests on the banks of that river every night, I’m sure they must have picked it clean.
JW: Interesting!
SL: What’s your interest in this?
JW: I’ve been covering this for two years now, and of course for a long time we wondered why aren’t there any pieces of this mysterious plane, and then they started to turn up, and like the Australians I wondered, how come it’s so clean? Because there was one that washed up on Reunion Island that had all kinds of barnacles on it. Some people had speculated that some kind of creature might have picked it clean, but when your photograph came out, that was just very powerful evidence that that must have been exactly what happened.
SL: Yes.
JW: How do you think it wound up — you found it at this place, Klein Brak, and then it wound up in I guess, Mossel Bay is 15 km way or something?
SL: Yes, Mossel bay is about 10 km further on. You know, originally I said to Joe in Australia, I said to him that I was, when I walked past there the next day, this thing wasn’t there anymore, and I just gathered that it went back into the sea. And then when Neels picked this thing up, I said, “But it’s highly impossible that anything like that washing back into the sea, with the wind and all the sea currents and stuff around that area, would wash up in exactly the same spot three months later. What are the chances of that? It’s literally zero.” So my deduction was that this thing was washed up in the lagoon and the sandbanks in this lagoon changes all the time, and so does the dunes around there, from the prevailing southeasterly wind in summer, which blows everything up the river, you know, if it floats it will obviously move up into the lagoon, and that’s what I thought. It’s the most logical thing that it could have been in the same area three months later.
JW: So how do you reconcile the seemingly impossible thing? You would expect that the wind would blow it up into the lagoon, but instead it somehow seems to have washed back out into the sea, and gotten—I don’t know, how does it wind up where Neels found it?
SL: In retrospect I doubt whether it washed back into the sea. It was just my original impression, because it wasn’t there after the next high tide. I didn’t go up along, I had no reason to walk up the riverside at the time, and this thing was lying right at the river’s mouth, on the east of the side of the river, just at the mouth where the sea washed it up. During the course of the day, it was midsummer, it was our holiday season and that whole area there are hundreds of holidaymakers bathing in the sun and sitting there, kids playing in the river and the lagoon and so on, so it’s not impossible that anyone might have picked it up and even carried it up higher into the river, I don’t know. I can only speculate. But all I can say is, I think the chances that it washed out to sea and then came back three months later is impossible. So the only chance is that this thing somehow, either by human hand or by wind and water and what have you, ended up in the deeper part of the lagoon, and probably floated around there until it beached where Neels eventually found it. But who knows, you can only speculate on it.
JW: I quickly glanced at a map the other day. Where Neels found it wasn’t near the lagoon was it?
SL: It was on the bank, in fact it was exactly, we had to pinpoint it on Google and we measured it, it’s about 250 meters north of where I saw it the first time. And it was actually lying next to some washed up logs there on the edge of the sand. But now if you look at your Google Maps, it looks different from what it looks like now, or what it looked like in December, because that river, as the tide goes in and out, the sandbanks alters all the time. So you can’t—I’ve got a picture of exactly what things were like at that time in December. All I know is that there were lots of holidaymakers in that area every day. This thing might have drifted up in the river with the next high tide, and perhaps helped by the wind which blows upriver, and it might have beached somewhere and got covered in sand by kids playing or whatever and when the beach changed again, we’ve recently had a fair amount of rain in January and February, and often that river comes down and brings lots of logs and all sorts of stuff down. It might have washed open again. As I say, one can only speculate.
JW: I misunderstood, I thought he found it 10 km away.
SL: No, no, no, no! Actually, he gave me the spot on Google Maps and also the, he told me where to look, there’s a big log that’s lying there on the riverbank which has been lying there for more than a year now, since the last big flood we had, and he picked it up just next to that. I actually walked the distance the other day to go and pinpoint the area.
JW: So people were saying Mossel Bay but they really meant Klein Brak.
SL: Yes, it’s all in Klein Brak, in fact where he found it is about 250 meters from where I saw it.
JW: Did you only take the one picture at the time?
SL: You know what happened is, at the time I actually took two pictures, and some time in January my picture library became so big that I started removing some duplicates, and in fact I now realize that the other one was removed at that time. But what I did was, I had two and I just left the better one. You couldn’t really choose between them because they were taken at the same time and with the same camera.
JW: Same angle and everything?
SL: So this was the better picture… It’s such a coincidence, if I didn’t pick up that newspaper article, I wouldn’t even have known that I had the picture.
2) It occurred to me that the Lückhoff photograph would provide an important data-point for reverse-drift models, so I reached out to the GEOMAR institute in Germany, whose work I’ve described previously. I asked “Is your team looking at updating its findings in light of this new data, which provide a much narrower time window for the arrival of this debris?” I received the reply, “Such an endeavour will require a significant amount of time and effort in terms of the coordination and analysis. Given the lack of response from the Australian search authorities, and the still large uncertainty concerning the beaching of the debris, we do not intend on refining our analysis further at this stage.”
3) In another amazing coincidence, it turns out that Hong Kong-based aviation journalist Florence de Changy, who has made many important contributions toward solving the mystery of MH370, has a son who went to university in Canada with a young man whose brother found the most recent piece of debris in Mozambique. He wrote to Florence:
The piece was found right by a lodge called Cristina’s Lodge located on the Macaneta Peninsula on Sunday, 22nd of May, 2016. The piece was roughly 1 x 1.5 meters and about 15 cm thick. It did not have any metal on it and had the honeycomb inside. Hence, it was not very heavy and could be easily carried by one person. It did not look necessarily old and seemed as though it had only been on the beach for less than a week. The first time we found it (22/05/2016) it was at the high water line and it was fully exposed. It was found when it was low tide. We initially left the piece there but when we came back on the 28th of May, it was pushed a little higher up the beach by the ocean. It was not very noticeable and my mother found it when she was looking for drift wood along the beach. I got into contact with BBC on Thursday, 26nd of May, and they put me into contact with the Australian Transport Safety Board. I gave the piece to Eng. Jeremias Fr. Chito, a Technical Administrator at the Civil Aviation Center in Maputo, Mozambique.
Based on the photos’ metadata, they were taken at location S25 51 48.51, E32 44 38.25 (-25.863475, 32.743958) on 5/28,2016 at around 1:07 pm. Here’s one photo; the full set of 13 in high resolution can be found in this Dropbox folder.
@ Ge Rijn, Yes I agree the lettering needs to be checked out.
If you watch the video then at around 1 minute 18-20 you can see the edge reflecting a lot of light – it looks like metal honeycomb at any rate.
I have never seen that hexagonal pattern anywhere, but I think it’s likely it’s from some kind of aircraft due to the construction.
@Susie
The lettering is not Boeing either.
It would suprise me if it had anything to do with MH370 but it sure is an interesting find.
You’re forgetting that the moment acts to eliminate the force.
@Gysbreght
“Thank you for replying to my post. The angle of 5.7° is simple geometry of the classic speed triangle of airspeed, windspeed, and groundspeed.”
Agreed. But this is the drift angle over ground, or the difference between true heading and true track, which develops due to the movement of the airmass, in which the aircraft is flying. That has nothing at all to do with a slip angle.
http://www.iprr.org/comps/pet727/pet727figs/pg72Side%20slip_neg.jpg
At the moment the airmass or part of the airmass suddenly changes its vector and speed there might develop a short acceleration force on the airframe, but nothing in that magnitude.
You said:
“For directional stability I suggest you type “directional stability aircraft” in the Google search window. Even Oleksandr’s book got that bit right and calls it “weathercock”.
Thank you for the hint. It was version 1.0 which I learned 42 years ago and it should still be applicable. The weather vane effect, which you seem to refer to, is simply explained for the benefit of all readers. Once the fuselage is turned around its vertical axis through the aerodynamic center by some force (slipped), the vertical fin with the aircraft is no longer aligned with the relative wind (see my reference above). The relative wind exerts an opposing force on the vertical tail assembly, which in turn produces torque opposite to the slip direction, thus streamlining the fuselage again into the relative wind.
Flying from A to B the aircraft is in principle moving in a surrounding airmass. If a noticable sideslip develops, its cause is either a heavy foot on the rudder, a mistrim, or assymetric thrust. The movement of the airmass itself will not cause any sideslip and exept for few exceptions a change in the direction and speed of the airmass will not cause any noticable sideslip. It will cause a drift from the intended track and a need to crab into the wind for correction, but that does not cause a sideslip.
Turbulence and windshear may be expierienced at low altitudes and at high altitude in the vicinity of jet streams and cause momentary sideslip. But as neither the presence, the strenght nor the duration of such turbulence and windshear can be calculated in hindsight I miss the point, on what basis and for what purpose such a calculation by Oleksadr or yourself could be done for the possible flightpath of MH370.
Wind has an effect on the speed over ground and if not corrected for the track. Slip angle has an effect too, but a calcuable slip angle would not be existent due to wind effects.
I rest my case.
Over ground the vector of the aircraft and the vector of the airmass add up and a correction factor has to be applied to track to the target in a straight line.
When you write “I had to correct for crosswind on each flight, …” I think you mean the crab angle. To maintain a sideslip angle you have to maintain rudder and aileron off center in opposite directions and the ball in your turn-and-slip indicator (if you had one) will be off-center.
Gysbreght,
“You’re forgetting that the moment acts to eliminate the force.”
Moment does not act to eliminate force. Moment causes rotation, while force – displacement. These are different things. But I guess I know what you meant in your twisted statement. And I do not forget about this aspect.
P.S. typo correction: later -> lateral.
Fine. Maybe some day …
RetiredF4,
“At the moment the airmass or part of the airmass suddenly changes its vector and speed there might develop a short acceleration force on the airframe, but nothing in that magnitude.”
Yes. However, this force causes an aircraft to gain additional velocity until relative lateral air velocity with respect to the airframe becomes zero, similarly to your example of a hot balloon. In slowly varying ambient wind, this force is small, but it acts persistently, similarly to the Coriolis.
Re: “Over ground the vector of the aircraft and the vector of the airmass add up and a correction factor has to be applied to track to the target in a straight line.”
Exactly. This correction is applied in TRK or HDG mode. What about ATT mode? In my understanding in this mode the goal is to maintain attitude, that is to say bank angle in particular. If no correction is applied, will a trajectory be a straight line for the case of zero bank angle?
Re: “The relative wind exerts an opposing force on the vertical tail assembly, which in turn produces torque opposite to the slip direction, thus streamlining the fuselage again into the relative wind.”
Strictly speaking this depends on the relative position of the center of moment (denoted as ca in the book Gysbreght hates) to the center of gravity (cg). Note that ca can ‘drift’. The situation illustrated in this book corresponds to what you said.
Re: “I miss the point, on what basis and for what purpose such a calculation by Oleksadr or yourself could be done for the possible flightpath of MH370.”
Slowly-varying wind induces the same force as gusts and turbulence, just of much smaller magnitude, but persistent. If no correction is applied, a trajectory is not straight. Imagine you are driving a car. Is it subjected to the action of cross-wind and Coriolis? Yes. Would your trajectory be affected? Depends on: (1) Imagine you are driving on a highway; (2) Imagine you are in a flat desert with no navigation or landmarks.
Before the airplane hits the crosswind, airspeed = groundspeed. When the crosswind is instantaneously ‘switched on’, the groundspeed remains what it is. It cannot change instantaneusly, because according to Newton only a force can change speed and direction of an object. What changes is the airspeed relative to the airplane, which is then at an angle to the airplane’s plane of symmetry. That angle is called the sideslip angle. The sideslip causes the airplane to ‘weathercock’ into the relative wind (the airspeed vector), and then the initial sideslip angle (less a fraction) becomes the drift angle.
Agreed.
Oleksandr & Gysbrecht. Can you guys please give it up? This pointless point-scoring is a waste of time and space.
@Susie
We must exercise caution. It may have been planted.
Remember the strange case of the towelelette in the nighttime.
Paul Smitson,
In my opinion discussion of fragments on the beaches is the waste of time and space. There are relevant authorities, which will figure out what these parts are. At the very end, what is a difference from which parts of the aircraft these fragments were torn away? How can it help to find the aircraft or establish what has happened to it?
In contrast, discussion of the possibility of the effect of wind and Coriolis is of high importance, because this explains why a trajectory could be curved, and how it should be modelled. I know, it goes against IG-camp and against conspiracy camp, which dominate here. Whether discussion is pointless or not remains to be seen.
@Oleksandr, The Coriolis discussion does seem to be limited to you and Gysbreght, why don’t you take it offline and then report back to the rest of us when you get it sorted out?
@Jeff
Just to be clear, the CI theory has flaws that I cannot fix. I categorize myself in the same camp as Victor – there is no theory that is not burdened by troubling questions.
I would think that failure of the ADIRU in the course of a highjacking must be dismissed as being too remote as a coïncidence. What can be considered is that someone in the equipment bay made the ADIRU inoperative. If that is done with the autopilot engaged, and no one in the cockpit enters a reference heading in the POS INIT page displayed on the CDU, the only remaining autopilot roll mode is ATT (attitude).
The main question to be answered is then: will the SATCOM system continue to function as recorded by INMARSAT, without ADIRU data and without heading reference?
As to the trajectory calculations: After removal of “crosswind drag”, what remains is just wind and Coriolis.
Postscript: Sorry Jeff, after writing this post I read your post of 8:01 AM. Does the above change your mind?
http://www.francetvinfo.fr/monde/asie/boeing-disparu/info-complement-d-enquete-je-crois-qu-il-s-agit-d-un-morceau-du-mh370-de-nouveaux-debris-decouverts-a-madagascar_1491097.html#xtor=CS1-747
Has Blaine found 3 more pieces or is my French all wrong…or is it a dream?
The SIO location in the pilot simulator is in my mind. perhaps he knew something coming beforehand. Just wondering if there’s any possibility of water landing? is pilot trained to ditch?
I recalled long ago it was in the news that the pilot received a phone call before the plane took off?
Samuel Armstrong, who found the piece of debris, told the network he just “stumbled across a piece of what I thought to be aircraft”.
“I thought about planes that had gone down and wondered where it could have come from,” Mr Armstrong said.
“I’ve found fruit along this coastline that’s from overseas, it could’ve been dropped off boats, but yeah, stuff travels a long way.”
WHAT KIND OF FRUIT? MANGOSTEENS? SOMEBODY SHOULD ASK HIM FOR A SAMPLE (OR WHERE HE LEFT IT).
http://www.smh.com.au/world/plane-debris-found-on-south-australias-kangaroo-island-examined-for-mh370-link-20160609-gpftdf.html#ixzz4B5PoVDBq
Jeff,
You have created an excellent platform and opportunity to exchange ideas and knowledge, but based on your and Paul’s last suggestions, I feel it is time to navigate away. I hope one day my contribution will be useful to find out what has really happened.
@Susie. Yes, that is indeed what it says. Finds dated Monday 6th June at https://www.google.com/maps/place/Nosy+Boraha/@-18.6029381,34.6160131,3.46z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x221f7b30e074e04d:0x2f46fab240adb493!8m2!3d-16.8944201!4d49.9059405
One of the pieces appears to have a raised trapezoid section similar to the Moz piece.
I thought Samuel was so sweet – he reminds me of Badger in Breaking Bad : )
I too wondered about the mangosteens…
Seriously though…Blaine? Anyone? It took me ten minutes to post the link because my PC’s on a huge go slow today, so would be glad if someone took a look!
Ah thank you Paul! yy one of them has a letter as well – F I think
FB. Maybe an I or a 1 before that with a separation.
@Ed
Cheryl has provided feedback on this as a linguist, it is interesting to see it from a pilot perspective.
If the 6+ minute subsequent flight level reporting is extraneous, this is an important clue.
This break of continuity could either be indicative of a different pilot subconsciously
re-establishing control or a pilot under duress unnecessarily repeating himself.
Only, if the order was Z @17:01:17, a different voice @17:07:56 and then Z again @17:19:30, then neither of those make sense
I think the FB might denote that it comes from the bottom of something. B apparently means bottom.
Bottom of what, I do not know.
This may be untrue. (forum source)
Does anyone have a Boeing maintenance manual handy?
@Susie @Rob @David
That sure is very interesting. Second and thirth photo probably the same piece.
It’s almost exactly like the panel piece we discussed before. Same dimensions, angles, thickness, honeycomb, almost everything.
And found on Madagaskar.
It looks definitely liked another compartment of that panel above en behind the flaperon.
The first photo has lettering which is promising imo for identification.
Others any thoughts allready?
@Oleksandr asked me, “Do you know somebody, who has a better understanding of what the ATT mode does, and who is able/willing to conduct experiments in a real B777 simulator?”
I think your are asking if the ADIRU is non-operational and the Secondary Attitude Air data reference Unit (SAARU) continues to function whether the plane would or could enter a wings-level, attitude control mode. I don’t know the answer, and I don’t know anybody that has access to a simulator with the required level of fidelity to answer the question.
Another option is to pose the question to Boeing and/or Honeywell. Maybe @Ken Goodwin can help in that regard.
Let me just offer a skeptical opinion here, based on absolutely nothing factual, and freely admitting that I’m in a profession having absolutely nothing to do with aviation, science, or engineering.
As I understand it, the SIO search is ending soon. There has yet to be any debris found in any area this far south and east.
So now, all of a sudden, I’m supposed to believe that this thing was legitimately found? Moreover, it also happens to just be a piece, conveniently enough, with NO STEP written on it?
I offer no theory. I’m just saying that I don’t trust really any official entity involved in this whole aviation enigma. I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe in this many coincidences, and it just seems that someone is screwing around with all of us.
And the seal is also there.
Big plus in this photo to me is the dimensions are much better to be estimated.
Sure no 1m x 1.5m (if it’s a same piece).
~80 x ~50cm will then do much better.
@Susie and @Paul Smithson: This new potential discovery supports the observation that the debris is concentrated in locations that are “hot spots” for debris collection along the shore. The fact that Mr. Gibson was able to find for the second time what appears to be MH370 debris, this time with a film crew in tow, strongly suggests that a concerted effort should be able to find more debris. I have argued that the circumstances surrounding Mr. Gibson’s first extraordinary find should be repeatable if there was no tampering. It appears this has occurred.
Hi folks, closing comments here now. Please add your thoughts to the newest post. Thanks.