New search for MH370 - Walt's advice on how to get answers

Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, a Boeing B-777, vanished into thin air -- or deep water -- on 8 March 2014, on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. 227 pas and 12 crew members were on board, and are presumed dead after a 22-month search of a large chunk of the Indian Ocean failed to find the lost plane or any trace of it.

I followed the story closely, from its beginning -- see "MH370: Three guesses from Walt", WWW 14/3/14 -- until the search was ended in December 2016: "'Experts' admit looking in the wrong place for MH370", WWW 20/12/16. And I was among the first to put forward the suggestions that (a) the plane went down far from where the "experts" theorized, and (b) its disappearance was not unrelated to activities at the US military base on Diego Garcia. See "MH370: 1 + 3 = ??? Walt puts two possibilities together", WWW 19/3/14.

Conspiracy theory? You damn betcha! Just because it's a theory doesn't mean there was no conspiracy. All it means is that there's no proof!

But proof may yet be found. Today, Malaysia's government announced that it has approved a new attempt to find the wreckage of MH370. Earlier this week, an American company called Ocean Infinity sent a search vessel to have another look for debris in the southern Indian Ocean. Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said the company, which is working on a "no find, no fee" basis, "are willing to search the area of 25,000 square kilometers (9,653 square miles) pointed out by the expert group near the Australian waters." He did not offer further details.

The company itself said in a statement that the search vessel Seabed Constructor left the South African port of Durban -- take note of that -- on Tuesday, and was taking advantage of favourable weather to move toward "the vicinity of the possible search zone". But where is that, exactly? The first search, from the surface of the Indian Ocean, covered an area of several million square miles west of Australia. The subsequent underwater search mapped 710,000 square kilometers (274,000 square miles) of seabed at depths of up to 6,000 meters, slightly to the west of the initial search area. As Walt predicted, nothing was found. (Lifetime pct .988.)

However... this is where it gets interesting... some debris was found, on Réunion Island and off the coast of Moçambique and South Africa, 1000s of miles away from where the "experts" were looking, on the other side of the Indian Ocean. Here is a nice neat map showing the locations from which debris has been recovered.

How did the bits and pieces, identified specifically on the map, get so far from where the "experts" thought the plane had gone down after (they hypothesized) running out of fuel? Let's look once again at Walt's not-so-nice-and-neat diagram of the ocean currents which likely carried the debris to the south-western shores of the Indian Ocean.

This is the fourth time I've published this map. The first time was in "Current thinking on MH370", on 31 July 2015! (I used it again in "Piece of MH370 engine cover washes up on South African shore", WWW 23/3/16 and "Wreckage on shores of WESTERN Indian Ocean IS from MH370", WWW 24/3/16.)

I've drawn in the location of three major ocean currents -- the Moçambique, Aquinas and South Equatorial currents -- as well as the location of Diego Garcia, a small island leased by the USA from the British and the site of a huge American military establishment. There is some evidence of a sighting of a large airplane with red and blue stripes low in the sky near the Maldives -- due north of Diego Garcia, in the path of the South Equatorial current. See "MH370 - Just fancy that!", WWW 18/12/14. Now then...

My theory is that MH370 was shot down or brought down by some other type of weapon -- a laser beam or interference with the plane's onboard computer -- by persons or forces unknown (not necessarily American, you understand), for reasons only they know, somewhere in the vicinity of Diego Garcia. The wreckage then drifted west and south with the ocean currents named above, with bits of it washing ashore at the points shown on the nice map.

The logical place to search -- as I've been saying for well over three years -- would be around Diego Garcia. Since that's still a pretty large area to cover, especially nearly four years after the fact, I have an even better suggestion. Since the disappearance of MH370, the US of A has had a change of administration. Some of the "mistakes" of the Prez and his Secretary of State Hellery Clinton -- like the Libya debacle -- are coming to light. I suggest that the Malaysian authorities ask President Trump to order an investigation into what the US military knows about the disappearance of MH370. My guess is that if they didn't do it, they know who did!

More MH370 debris found? Guess where!

There has been a report of the finding of more debris, possibly from an aircraft -- Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 ??? -- which washed ashore on Baa Atoll Fehendhoo and Fulhahdhoo, both in the Southern Maalhosmadulhu Atoll, which is part of... wait for it... the Maldive Islands. Here's a picture of the large piece of flotsam found nearly a month ago.

So what is it? There's a resemblance to the B-777 flaperon found on Réunion late last month. On the other hand, as the South China Morning Post suggests, it could be just a piece of "an unusual make of surfboard".

Inspector Mohammed of the local police has the debris in custody, and "officials" from Malaysia and Australia are on the way to take a closer look [and maybe catch some waves? Ed.]

While it's much too soon to declare a Told-You-So, Walt can't help but be reminded of the investigation by French author Marc Dugain -- see "MH370 - Just fancy that!" (WWW 18/12/14) -- who theorized that there has been a cover-up in the disappearance of the airliner, which could have been shot down by the American military operating out of their huge base at Diego Garcia!

Take a good look at this map. The blue horizontal line running across the middle of the image is the Equator. The olive-coloured island straddling the Equator at the right edge is one of the islands of Indonesia. The last radar "sighting" of MH370 placed the aircraft just about there -- let's call it Point A -- heading northwest.

The "experts" looking for the missing plane claim that it then turned nearly 300 degrees to head southeast to the area in which the search has been concentrated. See the map in "Current thinking on MH370" (WWW 31/7/15).

In the centre of the map above, just southwest of India, are the Maldives -- Point B. Due south of the Maldives is the British Indian Ocean Territory, which includes Diego Garcia, leased by the Brits to the US military. It's marked separately, the dot to the southeast of the island group.

Now look again at the map in "Current thinking on MH370". You will see that the North Equatorial Current of the Indian Ocean runs from Point A to Point B, almost in a straight line. If a plane came down, by accident or by design, anywhere along that line, any debris would most likely wash up on the Maldives first.

That's exactly what M Dugain thought. But his theory, propounded last year, was dismissed by the "experts" because, errr, that would lend credence to the idea that the US military had something to do with the disappearance of MH370 and, for some reason, didn't want their involvement to be known. Imagine that.

Current thinking on MH370

On Wednesday, in "Wreckage of MH370 (?) surfaces" (updated yesterday), Walt expressed doubt -- great doubt -- as to the probability of a piece of debris from Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 having drifted more than 3000 miles westward across the southern Indian Ocean to the island of Réunion, where a B-777 "flaperon" has washed ashore. (Yes, Walt has now learned that a "flaperon" is a part of the trailing edge of an aircraft's wing.)

Turns out, now, that the party line being put out by the Australian and Malaysian "authorities" responsible for the search doesn't say that. They deny the suggestion made by Walt [and others! Ed.] that they've been looking in the wrong place, off the coast of western Australia. No, they say, the debris (the flaperon and possibly a beat-up suitcase) could have drifted considerably farther, in a counter-clockwise fashion north following the Western Australia current, then west along the South Equatorial current, then southwest with the Moçambique (Mozambique) current to La Réunion. Do I have to draw you a picture? Voilà!

Yes, I've taken a map of the Indian Ocean and drawn on the currents named and a couple of others. No, I didn't make those up. The source for the location and direction of the warm (red), cold (blue), and luke-warm (I guess, in black) currents is "Currents and Tides", on the Marinebio website.

The spokesthingies for the governments involved are certainly correct in saying that the currents of the southern Indian Ocean move counter-clockwise. And yes, it's possible that if a plane fell into the sea -- "made a water landing", as the airlines would say -- in the search area (highlighted in yellow), pieces of debris could have gone all the way around from, say, 4 o'clock, counter-clockwise to 9 o'clock.

What the "authorities" aren't saying is that it's even more possible that the plane came down -- accidentally or on purpose -- closer to 12 o'clock, which I have starred in red because it's the location of Diego Garcia, site of a huge US military (air and naval) base.

From Diego Garcia, the Americans control virtually the entire Indian Ocean and the airspace above it. Suppose for a minute that a paranoid US radar operator and/or a trigger-happy US pilot mistook MH370 for an enemy aircraft and shot it down. Would the Pentagon (and the Prez) admit and say, "Gee, we're really sorry but you have to understand that we're protecting the world from terrorism and there's bound to be a bit of collateral damage, every now and then?" Walt thinks not.

Further reading: In "MH370 - Just fancy that!" (18/12/14), Walt reports on the theory of French author Marc Dugain -- a former CEO of Proteus Airlines -- that there has been a cover-up in the disappearance of the airliner, which could have been hacked and then shot down by the Americans! IMHO, the finding of debris on the shore of La Réunion adds strength to M. Dugain's version of what happened, the "official" version notwithstanding.