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Comment by yellowapple | Hacker News Reader

Could the wings have bent backward on impact with the water?

'Bent' no, they'd have broken off if at all, and there's no sign of that on that sonar. Plus the horizontal stabilisers on the tail look swept too.

It's much much more likely it's a swept wing jet like the Cougar, and given that they're practically the same size...

What you’re saying is possible but understand that things will shift and settle in the 90 years since she went down. Most plane wrecks I’ve seen photos of show mangled fuselages, snapped off wings, tail sections, etc.

That's kind of my point, the sonar imagery looks exactly like an utterly intact swept wing jet, rather than a straight wing electra that hit the water at speed.

I'm much more inclined to think that what the sonar imagery shows is something like the result of :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B8lYbp3J1c

'Gently' settling on the sea bottom.

This is near impossible.

Plane wings are designed to withstand plane weight multiplied to overload from moving with acceleration to up or down, plus considerations about wearing of materials (not important in this case, because plane was near new when disappeared).

For this plane, considered overload, I think should be about 3.5 and wear overload about 2. Usually all these mean, when it was new, could do 4x and accepted to do aerobatics, but for survived now, I'm not sure if accepted straight flight with 1.5 overload :)

Now imagine scenario, what NATURE force could do so delicate manipulation, so bent each wing to very similar angle, with 4x plane weight force and then stop?

If you think, it was bent later, imagine scenario, how possible, near exact wear of each wing?

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