[rlmorel]

I think I was doing a poor job of conveying what I was thinking, I just did a line drawing and my contention is that configuration #1 is probably more common than configuration#2. That is why I think it is indeed upside down.

I thought about the configuration of the flaps as well when I first saw the picture, and I just thought that is how they fell over time as decay occurred because the plane was inverted and gravity took them down.

[rlmorel]

Maybe this will help us...

Here is another view of one, it could be the same plane (because the photos are from Palau also, but...it was a major seaplane base IIRC, and while this looks similar, there are marked differences in the wreckage, but there are very similar things in structure, so I thought this might help us. This one is "known" to be a Aichi E13A by the photographer.

For comparison, here is the one from the article. From the wreckage patterns, I think they are different: