The thing that is baffling is what I just found today - Josh Lang’s claims about how he found the aircraft, at http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/24246422/exclusive-pilot-describes-discovering-molokai-plane-crash
According to that, the Emergency Locator Transmitter was beeping before 3:30pm. Lang found the plane within minutes, called for help, went back to the Molokai Airport looking for help but there was nobody there, went back to the scene of the landing, and waited there until an hour after the initial sighting, before anybody showed up - and that was a military helicopter just to mark where the plane had gone down, about 500 yards from shore. So it was over an hour from the time that the emergency system was alerted to a plane down in the water, to the time that anybody showed up, just to put flares down for the rescue team that would come later.
And the Coast Guard rescue team said (as reported at http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/12/21872811-health-director-who-approved-obama-birth-certificate-dies-in-plane-crash )that “usually they would drop rescue gear into the water for the survivors but because the helicopters had arrived quickly so that was not required.”
“We acted as the on scene commander,” Ferguson, an avionics electrical technician, third class, said. “So we control all the different assets flying around there and made sure no one flew into that air space.”
So even though Lang called for help immediately upon finding the downed plane, the Coast Guard was not alerted until after Lang had already flown to Molokai Airport, looked around and found nobody, and flown back to the site.
It all just seems crazy.
According to the article
“According to Lang and Thomson, about 15 minutes before the first rescue crew arrived the aircraft completely submerged and sank. “
If the plane floated for 25 minutes and the rescue crew arrived 15 minutes after it sank wouldn’t that mean about 35 to 45 minutes after the crash the first rescue crews arrived?
Is that the crew that put the rescue swimmer in the water?
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/24246422/exclusive-pilot-describes-discovering-molokai-plane-crash
Lang also claims they “contacted the Moloka’i tower for clearance just before 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. They say the tower operator asked if they were able to hear an “ELT” or Emergency Locator Transmitter.” But when they landed at the airport 5 minutes later, there was no one around. IOW, there was at least one person in the tower who knew there had been a crash but disappeared from the scene within moments. Who called the Coast Guard and the fire department? This thing gets weirder and weirder.