Yes, I saw what was being talked about when I saw the shadow on the top of the plane.
But now the question becomes what happened to the people? See my last past (or whenever it was) where I described how close in time (based on the progression of the plane sinking) Fred’s image (with Fuddy and Yamamoto by the plane’s door, Holstein swimming along the wing, etc) and Lang’s image are. But Fred’s image is from Puentes’ video which at that time had EVERYBODY in the area between the wing and the tail. Lang’s image has nobody in that space PLUS about another wing’s length out from the wing.
How can these be photos of the same event?
Obviously Lang’s photo was taken a few minutes later than the other one. You can see that the plane has taken on considerable water in the interim.
“But now the question becomes what happened to the people?”
It’s quite simple. The people were swept away by the ocean currents. It takes only a few minutes for the currents to move these people one or more football fields away from the aircraft. Withing a half hour the ocean currents can carry people in the water one or more miles away from the place they entered the water. The channel these people were in is notorious for having extraordinarily strong and treacherous ocean currents.
“How can these be photos of the same event?”
You are mistaken in your assumption about when the Lang photographs were maade in relation to the ditching of the aircraft and the survivors evacuating into the sea, and you are mistaken in your conclusion that the survivors had to be within the area framed by the Lang photographs or video.
The Cessna takeoff occurred about 1520 Hours local time, and the aircraft ditched within a few minutes. It can be assumed the 8 passengers and 1 pilot had evacuated the aircraft into the sea sometime about 1525 Hours, give or take a couple of minutes.
The Lang aircraft was notified by the air traffic controller about the ELT emergency transmissions from the Cessna at about 1530 Hours. The lang aircraft overflew the ditched Cessna and then the survivors about five minutes after being alerted to the crash by the air trafic controllers. So, the Lang aircraft would have been overflying the Cessna and survivors in the sea sometime around the 1530 to 1535 timeframe.
The Lang aircraft left the crash scene to seek rescue assistance by landing at the nearby airport, but found no one around to help get assistance to the survivors. After takeoff the lang aircraft returned to the crash scene to maintain visual contact with the survivors.
At the moment I am not informed as to which of the two occasions the lang aircraft made the photographs of the Cessna in the sea, before or after going to the airport to seek assistance. If the photographs or video were made after the return to the crash scene, then the timeframe would have been long after 1535 Hours and before the arrival of the U.S. Coast Guard rescue helicopters at about 1630 Hours. For the sake of discussion, assume the Lang aircraft would not have returned to the crash scene and began photographing or video recording the scene any earlier than 15 minutes to a half hour after 1535 Hours, or 1550 to 1605 Hours.
Given the above assumptions, the first opportunity to produce the Lang imagery may have been sometime around 1530 to 1540 Hours. The second opportunity to produce the Lang imagery may have been about 1550 or 1605 Hours to about 1630 Hours.
Wind speed at the time of the crash was 14-17mph gusting to 27-30mph. Surface sea current speeds in the Pacific Ocean in the regions a few hundred miles around the Hawaiian Islands average over over long time scales at about one-third knot to one-hald knot. Surface sea current speeds in the channels between the Hawaiian Islands and near island shorelines often considerably exceed speeds farther out in the Pacific Ocean. If for the sake of computing convenience we assume the speed of a current is 1 knot or one nautical mile per hour, you take the 6,000 feet per nautical mile and divide the 6,000 feet by the 60 minutes in one hour to get a speed of 100 feet per minute. So, then it follows that a current speed of one-half knot is equal to a speed of 50 feet per minute, and a current speed of one-third knot is equal to a speed of 33.3 feet per minute.
So, how far could the current have caused the survivors in the sea to drift after evacuating the aircraft? According to the reports, the survivors were variously picked up at distances of about one-half mile (3,000 feet) to one mile westwards (6,000 feet) from the aircraft crash site at about 1630 Hours or later. This indicates the survivors drifted with the current for about one hour at speeds of about one-half knot to one knot or about 50 feet to 100 feet per minute.
The time that elapsed between the time the survivors evacuated the Cessna to when there was a first opportunity to produce the lang imagery would have been somewhere about 5 to 10 minutes at the very least. In the period of five minutes the survivors would then have drifted 5 times 50 feet per minute to 5 time 100 feet per minute, or 250 to 500 feet at the very least. If the Lang imagery was taken at 1545 hours, the survivors could have drifted 20 minutes or 20 times 50 feet per minute or 20 times 100 feet per minute, which is 1,000 to 2,000 feet from the aircraft crash site.
If the Lang imagery was taken on the second opportunity after returning to the scene of the mishap, then 30 to 70 minutes could have elapsed before the imagery was produced. That would indicate the survivors could have drifted with the current a distance of 1,500 to 7,000 feet from the crash site.
Absent from these calculations is the distance in which the partially submerged Cessna also drifted away from the crash site before being captured in the Lang imagery. In any event the evidence indicates the survivors had to have drifted well beyond the few hundred feet surrounding the Cessna within only 5 to 10 minutes after leaving the aircraft, which was before the Lang aircraft arrived on the scene and began producing the imagery.