Pacific Ocean. This airplane has an overall length of approxi-
mately 11.8 m, a wingspan of 16.8 m, and a height of 3.1 m
(Figure 2). Two of the objects proposed to be seen in the video
are the front landing gear and the rear wheel. Historical docu-
ments were reviewed, and the rear tire was identified in a 19
May 1937 aircraft inspection report to be a “Goodyear 16×7”
tire. Exemplar front and rear landing gears from an extant
Lockheed Electra Model 10E, construction number 1042, were
provided for dimensional and visual analysis.
Video was recorded during a
ROV
search of the suspected
crash site by a third party, at a depth of 150 to 300 m. We
received the video for analysis retrospectively, and we were
tasked with extracting as much information as possible from
the video footage itself. During an internal review of the
video, two objects resembling the front and rear landing gear
were identified. The high levels of sedimentation and/or
calcareous growth covering the purported objects prevented
positive identification of the objects. However, meaningful
analysis could still be performed to identify whether the un-
derwater objects seen in the video are consistent with objects
Figure 1. The tubular structure illustrates the camera trajectory derived from underwater ROV video, which consists of tightly-spaced,
multi-colored rectangles, where each rectangle represents the camera pose in different frames of the video. The sparse point cloud
(granular data) represents the view of the seabed generated from the underwater ROV video.
Figure 2. Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Electra Model 10E aircraft. Scanned from
Lockheed Aircraft Since 1913
by René Francillon (Photo
credit: USAF).
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March 2016
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
