| P-MAN X Update #24
- Climbing. Swimming. Bats. This morning, the plan was for Joe to meet at 8:00 with a Palauan who has reported knowing where there's a wing up in the jungle on Ngerchaol. The hunter would lead Joe to the site, then they'd both come back and at 9:00 we'd pick up Max and a friend of his who reportedly knows where there's an underwater site inside Malakal harbor. After diving (or at least locating) that site, we'd take Max and his friend back to Neco, then we'd all go back to Ngerchaol and document the new "wing" site, and finally we'd return to the new underwater site. It didn't go down quite like that. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? When we got to Neco, we loaded all of the dive gear on a cart to take down to the boat, then discovered that neither the first (Ngerchaol) guide nor the second (Malakal harbor) guide had shown up. We unloaded the dive gear. The second man had simply forgotten. The first wound up being scheduled to come a bit later. We re-scheduled the second guy for tomorrow (we think). The first guy did show up. We loaded the dive gear again. We headed over to Ngerchaol, where Joe, Grover, and the guide headed up the hill to locate the object of interest. They found it! But the guide had to get back to town, so he and Joe came back down to the boat, Grover stayed up with the object, the rest of us geared up and started the climb up to the object, Joe took the guide back to Neco and returned to Ngerchaol to come up and join us in searching the surrounding area for other debris. Now, when I say "up the hill" and "searched the surrounding area," think of searching for something that's hidden somewhere on the outside wall of a 20-story building, and imagine that the wall is covered with jungle trees, roots and vines, evenly distributed over broken glass. Further imagine that handholds for climbing on this wall are evenly split between secure ones and rocks that simply break off in your hand when you put weight on them, and that small trees and vines are evenly split between ones that are secure when you grab them and ones that break off when you grab them. A good rule of thumb for a team trying to scale the side of this island (and the majority of other rock islands in Palau) is to climb line-abreast, and be sure you're never climbing directly below another climber, lest you be struck by bouncing, crashing, razor-sharp coral rocks. So anyway, we believe that the thing that our guide led us to, part-way up the hill, is an almost-intact horizontal stabilizer from an Avenger.
By remarkable non-coincidence, there happen to be an Avenger wing and flap and some empennage control surfaces in the water down in the area below and roughly in a line with this stabilizer. We (Joe, naturally) found another piece of blue-painted aluminum up on top of the ridge. Pretty much on the same line. And there was an Avenger reportedly lost in this area. Crew MIA. So we may be closing in on an identification. This island is long and narrow, with a relatively small crest that runs the length of the island. It's nearly vertical on both sides, including the side on which we documented the stabilizer. After a careful climb back down to the boat, we had a brief swim call to wash off the grime and blood from the climb. We drove over to the other side of Malakal harbor and tied up in a shady spot for lunch. Then we came back across the harbor to a GPS spot where there's a "red circle" on that famous Japanese map, and confirmed that that circle is pretty much in a line with the Avenger parts that we've found so far. Could the rest of the Avenger have come to rest out there? Maybe. But it's close to 100 feet deep at that spot, and the visibility is very low, so we'd need more information and perhaps better technology (such as side-scan sonar) to do a reasonable search here. Just going down for a very brief scouting expedition to look at a small section of muddy bottom in such a large area doesn't sound like good use of our time. We headed back to the Nelson Corsair crash site (also in Malakal harbor) that JPAC investigated (without recovering remains) in 2004, to do a dive to check out a hunch that the debris field might actually extend a bit to the east of the area that JPAC investigated. Although we confirmed that there are a few pieces to the southeast of the main site, they are very small and very few - suggesting that the crash site is in fact as compact as we had always assumed. Worth checking, though, since no remains were recovered at the site. We finally headed back to Neco. This evening we were invited to a special dinner at Joe and Esther's house. Very few non-Palauans are invited into Palauan homes, so this was quite an honor, in addition to being a spectacular culinary event. Many courses of amazing stuff including taro in various forms, tapioca, crab, shrimp, and grouper were served by several members of Joe's family. The highlight of the meal was a couple of servings of fruit-bat soup, especially in honor of Laura and Grover. Laura, as an anthropologist, is interested in bones. Most any kind of bones. Not only did Laura enjoy the meat and the soup, but she also got Joe to finish off one of the bats, quickly and enthusiastically, and save ALL of the bones for her.
- Reid |
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