r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/HimelTy • Jul 21 '26

Video A crashed Pan Am passenger plane from 1952 has been identified today by Discovery Channel in the Atlantic Ocean.

60.6k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

861 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

3.1k

u/z0hu Jul 21 '26

so 17 people survived this, so they must have had some idea of the general location. they also found this at 2k feet below the surface while MH370 may be up to 13k-20k feet below. it's a pretty big step up.

1.4k

u/Murky-Relation481 Jul 21 '26

Also MH370 almost certainly broke apart significantly on impact and depending on the depth where it hit the ocean it could be spread over a HUGE area. It is very likely nothing will ever be recovered or seen on the ocean floor for that flight because of this.

517

u/skepticalbob Jul 21 '26

They've recovered wreckage, but good luck finding where it crashed.

178

u/gimmematcha Jul 21 '26

I thought they at least are pretty sure on the location? By studying currents of where pieces of wreckage have floated to and then working backwards

234

u/IHop_Waitress Jul 21 '26

By studying currents of where pieces of wreckage have floated to and then working backwards

Kinda? I mean we found floating pieces in the months after the crash as they washed ashore in Reunion, and Madagascar (maybe? somewhere else east of Africa).

But all that can do is tell you the western indian ocean theory is correct. And sure there's modeling of ocean currents.... but that can only get you so far. You would need to fully understand how those pieces float in the ocean, and then have exact data on flows over months... and while we can estimate... it is just an estimate.

Which when you're talking about months of ocean current data and weather.... still leaves you an absolutely enormous area of interest.

54

u/gimmematcha Jul 21 '26

From the Wikipedia:

a drift study of the recovered objects by the CSIRO, identifying the crash area "with unprecedented precision and certainty" at 35.6°S 92.8°E, northeast of the main 120,000 km2 (46,000 mi2) underwater search zone.

It seems they're pretty certain?

74

u/ClarenceLe Jul 21 '26

​"We know more about the surface of the Moon and about Mars than we do about the deep sea floor, despite the fact that we have yet to extract a gram of food, a breath of oxygen or a drop of water from those bodies."

2

u/YoMomsHubby Jul 22 '26

Because mars and the moon compared to earth are some basic bitches

21

u/jakexil323 Jul 21 '26

120,000km2 is still a huge area. We are talking 10 times the size of New York Metropolitan Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area

11

u/gimmematcha Jul 21 '26

Not sure I follow? It reads to me the coordinates of the crash location were not in the search area, to the north east of it. 

6

u/IHop_Waitress Jul 21 '26

northeast of the main 120,000 km2 (46,000 mi2) underwater search zone.

120km x 100km is a an enormous search zone

4

u/Lou_C_Fer Jul 22 '26

That's the main search zone. All the info we have about where they think it is are the coordinates. Honestly, and this is a real suggestion, not an insult... you should look into classes for reading comprehension. If you made this mistake, you are probably missing so much info that could help your life.

I know that's a huge assumption, but god damn, man. Reading comprehension is so important and this was so straight forward that I cannot comprehend how multiple people have misunderstood what that sentence says.

1

u/IHop_Waitress Jul 22 '26

You wrote a whole novel about reading comprehension to the wrong person lmfao. Reddit knuckle draggers are the best. Never change

1

u/Lou_C_Fer Jul 22 '26

Dude, I wrote two paragraphs trying to be helpful.

But hey, maybe you just aren't capable.

Good luck to you.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/Anselwithmac Jul 22 '26

There are certain data sets that pinpoint where the plane went down. Not only did it go down, but it flew figure 8s before running out of fuel. Mass murder, in my opinion

2

u/IHop_Waitress Jul 22 '26

Mass murder, in my opinion

It's been known mass murder for a decade now....

You don't end up in the middle of the western indian ocean on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing by accident

1

u/kangareddit Jul 22 '26

Also the fragments of the plane (that likely hit the ocean at hundreds of kilometres per hour, disintegrating on impact) would float down kilometres to the ocean floor which is actually closer to rolling mountain ranges and hills and valleys, in complete darkness, under thousands of tonnes of water..

2

u/skepticalbob Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

Pretty sure it is in a vast area of the Indian ocean and not somewhere else. That's all they know.

2

u/DreamySailor Jul 22 '26

They had theories, but no one has found the thing.

1

u/MechAegis Jul 21 '26

I thought i heard that that could sorta of know where it is but it just too deep to go down and pin point where. Wasn't its black box still on but the depth at which it was distorted the signal?

1

u/littlebugonreddit Jul 21 '26

If I remember correctly, they had a radius within like ~10-20 km, or i could be missing a zero there

1

u/Snorblatz Jul 21 '26

The general area perhaps but it’s an ENORMOUS search area to cover

1

u/Schmantikor Jul 22 '26

They still have ideas where to look but they're far from sure

-2

u/irotinmyskin Jul 21 '26

Just ask Courtney Love. She’ll tell you where it is

4

u/Careless-Weather8877 Jul 21 '26

Didn’t parts of it wash up months later? Am I thinking of something else?

3

u/idefix24 Jul 21 '26

Yes, parts of MH 370 washed up on the African coast. That means it went down in the Indian Ocean, but where is still hard to pinpoint.

3

u/Laphad Jul 22 '26

go on the conspiracy sub and you can learn the TRUTH about MH370

Wormhole.

Obviously.

7

u/Nuclear_rabbit Jul 22 '26

The real truth isn't much of a mystery. The pilot had practiced a flight simulator on his home computer where he did a u-turn as soon as he left tower range, increased altitude, stayed up until oxygen ran out for the passengers, then himself, then it would nosedive into the ocean.

The pilot reportedly did not take his divorce two years prior well, either.

It was an unfortunate case of pilot suicide.

3

u/Laphad Jul 22 '26

Oh yea nah I'm aware just the guys over on the conspiracy sub refuse to accept that no one was found floating around lol

They think life jackets float indefinitely and that the sea is small

2

u/Nuclear_rabbit Jul 22 '26

Ah, well, in that case, don't they know the Martians shot it down before they could discover the Antarctic ice wall? You see, that's the thing. The government isn't hiding the ice wall from us, they're trying to reach it, too

1

u/Electric_Didgeridoo Jul 21 '26

this is the vibe I got from it as well, never gonna find it maybe pieces but how identifiable is that.

56

u/sixwax Jul 21 '26

Yeah, this isn't exactly a needle in a haystack

47

u/npsage Jul 21 '26

It's more like searching for a trace of a needle in a haystack warehouse district.

2

u/Hailfire9 Jul 22 '26

With a rough idea of what building the particular haystack was once housed in, but no idea how that day's employees sorted the pallets nor if they had to move it from one building to another.

We have a ridiculously good idea of where it probably crashed; a ridiculously poor idea of where it settled.

1

u/Lou_C_Fer Jul 22 '26

If it settled intact as it seems to have done, the distance it traveled underwater had to be limited. As the video makes clear, the limitations were technology, not trying to locate the wreck. The drone found the plane on its first pass. So, they knew where it was.

3

u/J5892 Jul 21 '26

It's more of a needle at the bottom of a hot tub.

20

u/lovebus Jul 21 '26

have you played with one of those torpedo pool toys? That plane could have glided for miles before hitting the floor, and that isn't even counting the drift over the years afterwards.

17

u/AndreasDasos Jul 21 '26

There also just wasn’t the level or scale of technology in the decades after 1952 compared to now

4

u/wonkey_monkey Expert Jul 21 '26

it's a pretty big step up drop down.

1

u/Reincarnatedpotatoes Jul 21 '26

Theres not enough of MH370 left to find one the ocean floor. Judging by pieces that have washed up it likely hit the ocean close to 500mph and disentigrated upon impact.

1

u/Jafar_420 Jul 22 '26

I was so damn interested on MH370. CNN was covering it it seemed like hours at a time and I remember watching it for weeks.

I still want to know what happened.

1

u/ShatHammer Jul 22 '26

I say we build a sub to go down and check it out

1

u/JunketAvailable4398 Jul 22 '26

EVERYONE on board survived the water landing. Crew had trouble getting the life rafts out of storage and passengers had trouble finding vests and panic set in. Plane sank in only a couple of minutes with a lot still inside.