Seaplanes over the Great South Bay

1. The Paulides thread (what the “float plane / locator” claim actually is)

“David Pleiades” = David Paulides, Missing 411. No separate creator by that name surfaces; “Pleiades” is a phonetic catch. The aviation sub-pattern he repeats across episodes (“A Plane Disappears…”, “A Young Pilot Goes Off Course…”, “A Couple Disappears in Their Plane”):

• A small plane vanishes in good-enough conditions; the ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) never transmits or is never recovered — so the one device whose whole job is “find the wreck” produces nothing.
• Wreck and/or bodies later turn up in water that was already searched, or far from the plotted course.
• This is not pure folklore: the FAA/AOPA record is that ELTs have a bad activation rate — many crashes produce no usable signal (hook-and-loop-mounted units tearing free, antenna shearing, water immersion killing the 121.5/406 MHz signal, battery/switch failure). Steve Fossett (2007) is the canonical “modern plane, searched airspace, found late by accident” case. So the mechanism Paulides dramatizes (locator silent + body/wreck in searched water) is real; his inference (a predation/anomaly pattern) is the framework layer.
• Float/sea planes sharpen it: they operate low, over water, often outside radar/ATC, land where there is no runway record, and sink — so when one goes down the wreck is submerged (no debris field to spot) and the ELT is drowned. Float-plane disappearances are therefore structurally the most likely to leave “no locator, never found.” That is the core of the correlation Jason heard.

Framework read: this is a coupling-membrane / water-boundary signature — things crossing the land↔water impedance boundary go quiet and are not returned. Same boundary physics as the coastal-effect thread in research/manhattan-axis/. Hold as INTERPRETIVE; the facts (ELT failure rates, sunk-wreck non-recovery) stay public, the meaning stays gated.

2. The Great South Bay seaplane story — the arcs, by decade

Jason’s instinct (“this was a big deal and just stopped with no story — there’s a story”) is right. The service didn’t fade; it was killed by a convergence. Four arcs:

Arc 1 — The Navy got there first (WWI) — and this is the “not an innocent place” layer

The glamorous celebrity seaplane sits on top of a century of militarized, death-marked, disappearance-prone water. Four hard facts, all documented:

1. NAS Bay Shore was the SECOND naval air base in America (after Pensacola). The land was the private Bay Shore Air Club at the foot of Garner Lane on Lawrence Creek, owned by Charles Lanier Lawrance — who leased it to the Navy for $1/year for the duration of the war. In 1916 the Second Battalion of the NY Naval Militia dredged 8 acres of fill out of the Great South Bay and built five hangars. At peak it trained ~1,000 servicemen a day. Flew Curtiss Model F and HS/HS-2L flying boats on training + anti-submarine patrol securing the South Shore. Decommissioned May 1919; personnel sent to Pensacola; the site was erased by suburbia (now under Bay Shore lawns). Lawrance’s own air-cooled engine became the Wright Whirlwind — the engine that carried Lindbergh to Paris and powered Earhart and Byrd. His line on his own obscurity: “Who remembers Paul Revere’s horse?” (Fire Island News; Greater Long Island / Chris Verga; USNI 1949; Cradle of Aviation.)

2. A German U-boat sank a U.S. warship right off Fire Island. USS San Diego (Armored Cruiser No. 6) struck a mine laid by SM U-156 off Fire Island on July 19, 1918, and sank in 28 minutes — the only major U.S. warship lost in all of WWI. 6 dead of 1,114; the disciplined evacuation saved the rest. The wreck is a protected war grave on the seafloor (Navy re-surveyed it 2017). U-156’s sisters (U-117, U-151, U-140, U-155) mined/shelled these approaches, sinking 13+ ships; U-156 then shelled Orleans, Cape Cod (the only enemy fire on U.S. soil in the war) and was engaged by HS-2L and R-9 seaplanes out of NAS Chatham. The Bay Shore flying boats existed to hunt exactly this. (Naval History & Heritage Command, “War Comes to America.”)

3. The first guided-missile / drone program in U.S. history flew over this water. The Curtiss-Sperry “Flying Bomb” / Hewitt-Sperry Aerial Torpedo — Lawrence Sperry’s pilotless, gyro-autopilot flying bomb, the first automatically-controlled flight (Mar 6, 1918, Sperry Field, Copiague, on the South Shore) — was the secret weapon of its day, an unmanned cruise missile a generation early.

4. And one of those drones vanished and was never found — over the Great South Bay base. The official Wikipedia List of Missing Aircraft carries this verbatim:

   October 17, 1918 — Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane (N-9) — 0 people — Malfunction — North Atlantic Ocean (S. of Long Island, NY) — “Unmanned test flight, last seen over the Naval Air Station Bay Shore at an altitude of 4,000 ft heading east.” America’s first guided missile flew off its course over the Bay Shore seaplane station, out over the Atlantic, and was never recovered. (Nearby on the same list: Oct 13, 1913, Blériot XI, Albert Jewell, lost S. of Long Island en route to a New York Times aerial derby — same water, same pattern.)

This is the literal intersection of Jason’s two threads. The Paulides/float-plane “locator-silent, flew out over water, never found” pattern has its documented ur-case right here: an unmanned aircraft that disappeared over the Great South Bay seaplane base in 1918. The bay was never an innocent recreational pond — it was the nation’s second naval air station, a U-boat kill zone that swallowed a cruiser, and a proving ground for secret flying bombs, one of which it swallowed too. The glossy 1960s–80s celebrity seaplane and the quiet “noise” ban are a thin bright skin over a controlled, militarized, body-keeping coast. Read against the coupling-membrane thesis (research/manhattan-axis/, and the Gilgo corridor Gilgo Corridor Synthesis, and this folder’s THE SIREN IN THE FRAMEWORK / OCCULT PAPERCLIP GEOMETRY UNIFICATION): Fire Island / the Great South Bay is the outer membrane of the New York array — the edge where things cross the land↔water boundary and are not returned.

• NARA target (paper, not web): see §4 — RG 72/80/38 for NAS Bay Shore war diaries + the Hewitt-Sperry / Bureau of Ordnance aerial-torpedo files + the USS San Diego court of inquiry.
• The bay has been a seaplane war-aerodrome for over a century — chosen every era for the same calm, shallow, sheltered land/sea-edge water.

Arc 1b — THE FLYING BOMB (full program) + THE SAN DIEGO (full story)

The Curtiss-Sperry Flying Bomb / Hewitt-Sperry Aerial Torpedo — America’s first guided missile, built and flown on the South Shore:

• Origin: idea of Peter Cooper Hewitt (Navy Consulting Board VP), self-funded, then joined by Elmer Sperry (gyrocompass/autopilot genius) + his son Lawrence Sperry. Navy approved summer 1917, funded $200,000. First demonstrated (manned, hands-off) Sept 11, 1916.
• Hardware: Navy modified 5 Curtiss N-9 seaplanes for manned trials (Sept 1917; accuracy ~2 mi over 30 mi), then ordered 6 purpose-built Curtiss “Flying Bomb” airframes — 25-ft span, ~15 ft, 1,000 lb of explosive, 50-mi range, 90 mph, catapult-launched, gyro-autopilot + a “distance gear” counting engine revolutions to trigger the dive. Payload/range = a real cruise missile.
• The crash log: first 3 catapult attempts (Nov/Dec 1917) wouldn’t fly; next 2 (Jan 1918) crashed on takeoff; Lawrence Sperry flew it twice in Feb (crashed the 2nd); they lengthened the fuselage 2 ft and did stability tests mounted on a car driven down a Long Island highway. March 6, 1918, Copiague/Amityville: the first successful powered unmanned flight in history (1,000 yds). Air University’s Evolution of the Cruise Missile (Werrell) logs the Amityville tests: 9, 12, 16, 17.
• It ate itself: by end of September 1918 all six Flying Bomb airframes were destroyed in crashes. Tests reverted to N-9s — and in October 1918 one N-9’s distance mechanism (set to 14,000 yds) failed and “the aircraft flew on over the sea and disappeared.” → the Oct 17, 1918 Hewitt-Sperry N-9 on the official List of Missing Aircraft: “last seen over the Naval Air Station Bay Shore at 4,000 ft heading east,” never recovered. The first drone, lost over the Great South Bay.
• Post-war: 5 more from Witteman-Lewis (flew Mar 1919) + 1 from the Naval Aircraft Factory; all unsuccessful; program killed 1922. Navy didn’t seriously return to drones until the mid-1930s → the WWII TDR/TDN assault drones descend from this. (USNI Proceedings 1967 “The Navy’s Secret Weapon Circa 1918”; designation-systems.net; USNI Naval History Aug 2019; Werrell, Air University Press 1985.) Even “the most elementary information concerning it was classified into recent years.”

USS San Diego (ACR-6) — the only major U.S. warship lost in WWI, off Fire Island:

• Pennsylvania-class armored cruiser, ex-California, 13,680 tons, 503 ft, crew ~1,100 (80 officers / 745 enlisted / 64 Marines). Left Portsmouth NH July 18, 1918 for NY to pick up a France-bound convoy; zig-zagging at 15 kn, Capt. Harley H. Christy, all watches alert.
• July 19, 1918, 11:05 a.m., NE of the Fire Island Lightship: explosion port side below the waterline by the port engine room. Engines dead, 9° list, water through the 6-in gun ports and coal chutes. Sank in 28 minutes.
• 6 dead of 1,114 — 2 killed instantly, an oiler on the port propeller shaft “never seen again,” one killed by a smokestack tearing loose, one by a falling life raft, one trapped in the crow’s nest and drowned. The disciplined evacuation is why only 6 died; the Navy later found the crew “did everything right.”
• The Bay Shore seaplanes bombed their own dead ship: aircraft of the First Yale Unit, based at Bay Shore, attacked “what they thought was a submerged submarine lying on the seabed in ~100 ft and dropped several bombs; it turned out to be San Diego.”
• The inquiry & the mystery: Christy thought torpedo (no wake seen). Aug 1918 Naval Court of Inquiry: mine (six contact mines found nearby). 1999: UNC historian claimed German spy Kurt Jahnke planted explosives (sabotage) — contested. Dec 2018 (Naval Surface Warfare Center + U. Delaware, AGU): computer modeling showed the blast was external → ruled out both internal accident and sabotage; not a torpedo (no bubble-stream reported; torpedoes carried more explosive, would show more damage); verdict = a mine from U-156 (Navy Hydrographic charts + captured German records put U-156 laying mines off Long Island). U-156 then shelled Orleans, Cape Cod (only enemy fire on U.S. soil in the war) two days later, and was herself lost ~Sept 1918 (mined in the Northern Barrage returning home).
• The wreck: inverted in 110 ft, highest point 66 ft down, ~13.5 mi south of Patchogue; National Register of Historic Places (1998); a war grave nicknamed the “Lobster Hotel.” More divers have died on the wreck than the six crew lost in the sinking.

NARA archival trail (confirmed live via the Catalog API v2, real naIds — the paper to pull):

• naId 110119862 — “Volume 1, November 1917,” Records of Navy Installations Command / Naval Districts & Shore Establishments (RG 181) — candidate NAS Bay Shore / 3rd Naval District shore-establishment log.
• naId 208184769 — “Hearings of the General Board, Vols. 1–2, Aug–Dec 1917” — where the coastal air-patrol-station program was argued.
• naId 62016248 — “BM – Mines and Torpedoes,” Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library — the mine-warfare / U-156 minelaying files.
• naId 311467599 / 311476716 / 311461569 — “Miscellaneous Material Print Files, World War” (1915–1922) — the WWI photo files holding San Diego imagery.
• naId 40914654 — Official Military Personnel File, James V. Forrestal (college naval-aviation units → later SecDef), digitized.
• (Catalog search works with header x-api-key; the by-naId detail path needs the search-by-naId form. Helper saved at session scratchpad nara.sh.)

Arc 1c — THE MILLIONAIRES’ UNIT: the national-security state was born on this bay

The Bay Shore seaplanes weren’t flown only by Navy regulars — they were the training ground of the First Yale Unit (Aerial Coast Patrol No. 1), the “Millionaires’ Unit.”

• Started June 1916 as a Yale sophomore’s flying club by F. Trubee Davison; got Admiral Robert Peary (the North Pole explorer) to authorize it; bought a Curtiss Model F flying boat; trained at Port Washington and Bay Shore on the Great South Bay. Became the first naval air reserve unit in U.S. history — a group of 29, surnames incl. Rockefeller. Enlisted en masse March 1917, 13 days before the U.S. entered the war.
• What those 29 Great South Bay flyboys became (Wikipedia / YaleNews / Wortman, The Millionaires’ Unit: The Aristocratic Flyboys Who Fought the Great War and Invented America’s Airpower):
  • Robert A. Lovett → Secretary of Defense (1951–53, Korea), Marshall-Plan-era “Wise Man,” Brown Brothers Harriman partner — a principal architect of the Cold War national-security establishment.
  • F. Trubee Davison → Assistant Secretary of War for Air (1926–33) and later Director of Personnel, CIA (1951); president of the American Museum of Natural History.
  • David S. Ingalls → the U.S. Navy’s first/only flying ace of WWI (6 kills in a Sopwith Camel), later Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air.
  • Artemus Gates → Under Secretary of the Navy (WWII). Plus Congressman John Vorys and Albert Sturtevant (first U.S. naval aviator killed by the enemy, 1918).
• The point: the founding cadre of American air power and the Cold War security state — a SecDef, two service air secretaries, a CIA personnel chief — was a rich-kid flying club that learned to fly on the Great South Bay. The hard center of “not an innocent place.”

The San Diego, straightened out (kill the myth): a Yale plane did NOT sink the only major U.S. warship lost in WWI.

• Why the cruiser was here: San Diego was a convoy-escort flagship for the troop run to France; on 18–19 July 1918 it was transiting Portsmouth NH → New York, bunkers full of coal, to pick up its next convoy — passing the Fire Island Lightship. NY was the mustering point; Fire Island is the doorway.
• What sank it: an external mine laid by U-156 (2018 forensics). Not a plane, not a torpedo.
• What the Yale planes did: after she sank, First Yale Unit aircraft from Bay Shore saw a large shape on the seabed (~100 ft), took it for the U-boat lying on the bottom, and dropped multiple bombs on it — it was the San Diego herself. The millionaire boys bombed the grave of the crew, chasing a ghost. (Navy History & Heritage Command, underwater-archaeology San Diego site; WWI Centennial Commission.)

NARA — the Yale men are digitized in the catalog: naId 200995 Oral History Interview with Robert A. Lovett; naId 7143253 letter from F. Trubee Davison as Asst. Sec. of War (RG 24 BuPers); naId 24640 Davison in Hoover-administration personages (Signal Corps); naId 102047142 Lovett at the Pentagon as SecDef; naId 576682444 State Dept note to Lovett; naId 237723145 Navy Personalities photo index (Ingalls). San Diego wreck: NHHC underwater-archaeology file.

Arc 1d — THE BLOODLINE: Morgan money, Skull & Bones, Donovan, and the CIA

Pull on the Yale Unit and the whole American security establishment comes up on the line.

• F. Trubee Davison, who founded the unit and trained it on Long Island, was the son of Henry Pomeroy Davison — the senior J.P. Morgan partner who ran the Red Cross War Council and organized Allied war financing. The Yale Unit’s flying boats were bought with Morgan money. Trubee was Skull & Bones (Yale’s secret society).
• The unit first trained privately in summer 1916 at the Davison estate, Peacock Point, Locust Valley (north-shore Gold Coast) before the Navy school at Bay Shore (south shore / Great South Bay). Both shores of Long Island. The aerial-coast-patrol concept came from John Hays Hammond Jr. + Admiral Peary (“The Aerial Coast Patrol Now A National Necessity,” Yale Daily News, Nov 1916).
• Davison’s arc: NY State Assembly → Assistant Secretary of War for Air (1926–33) → ran for Lt. Gov. of NY in 1932 alongside William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan (the future founder of the OSS → father of the CIA) → 1951: Yale trustee + first Director of Personnel of the newly-formed CIA. He was succeeded as Asst. Sec. War for Air by his own Yale Unit comrade Robert Lovett (future SecDef); his brother-in-law was Artemus Gates (Under Sec. Navy). (Wikipedia; Wortman; NYT 7/5/1951 “F. Trubee Davison Joins Intelligence; Named to the CIA”; CIA reading-room CIA-RDP78-04718A000500180115-2.)
• Net: a Morgan heir + Skull & Bones + founder of U.S. naval air power + running-mate of the OSS/CIA founder + the CIA’s first personnel chief — and it all begins as a flying club on the Great South Bay. The nucleus of American air power AND the intelligence state is one Long Island clan.
• Lovett oral history (naId 200995): Harry S. Truman Library, 34 pp, 7 July 1971, transcript online (Lovett was Truman’s SecDef).

Arc 1e — THE SABOTEUR: Kurt Jahnke, Black Tom, and the San Diego confession

The “mine vs. sabotage” debate on the San Diego dissolves into the same German covert war.

• Kurt Jahnke (1882–1950): German-American agent — former U.S. Marine, naturalized citizen, turned saboteur for the German Admiralty. Responsible for the Mare Island munitions explosion (Apr 1917) and “likely” the Black Tom explosion (Jul 1916, Jersey City — the massive German sabotage of a U.S. munitions depot that damaged the Statue of Liberty). Partner Lothar Witzke. Schemed (per Senate testimony of double agent Paul Altendorf) a Mexican invasion diversion. Later ran the “Jahnke Büro” reporting to Rudolf Hess, advised Walter Schellenberg, captured by Soviet SMERSH 1945, executed in Moscow 1950.
• The claim: historian Russel Van Wyk (ECU) found Jahnke’s confession to the Soviets that he was responsible for the San Diego’s explosion and led German diversionary intelligence in the U.S. 1914–18 (“Why She Sank”). The 2018 Navy forensics (external blast = a mine, not an onboard bomb) points to U-156’s minefield as the mechanism — but U-156 (a German naval minelayer) and the Jahnke sabotage ring were the same war effort. Either way, German covert action put the only major U.S. warship lost in WWI on the bottom off Fire Island. The same network that blew up Black Tom was operating in these waters.

Arc 0 — THE GROUND ITSELF: the Pines was born as a rescue station on a ship-killing coast

Dig under the resort and you hit the federal government’s maritime-disaster infrastructure.

• Fire Island Pines was originally settled in 1876 as a Coast Guard / Life-Saving station: “Lone Hill.” The community center Whyte Hall stands near its former site; Lone Hill Walk and Coastguard Walk still carry the name. Home Guardian Co. bought the first parcel only in 1922; incorporated 1953. The resort sits on a decommissioned federal rescue station. (FIPPOA, “Our History.”)
• The U.S. Life-Saving Service on Fire Island (NPS): stations from the 1848 Newell Act / 1849 first LI stations → USLSS formalized 1871 → merged into the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915. Seven crews on what is now Fire Island: Forge River, Smiths Point, Bellport, Blue Point, Lone Hill, Point O’Woods, Fire Island (founding dates 1849–1872). Surfmen patrolled the beach on foot every night, sunset to sunrise, watching for wrecks. Documented wrecks: the Bessie White, the Louis V. Place, and the Elizabeth (which drowned Margaret Fuller, 1850). The island’s very name may come from fires lit by wreckers/pirates to lure ships aground.
• This is the Clock-era substrate: Capt. Selah T. Clock’s late-1880s Lonelyville fishing operation sat among the Lone Hill + Point O’Woods stations. The barrier beach was a working ship-graveyard with a federal rescue grid long before it was a resort. The whole “not innocent” read has its floor here: this coast was always about things crossing the land↔water edge and not making it.

Threads — status (closed as far as the sources allow)

• The “ban” (original question) — RESOLVED in substance. There was no government “noise ordinance” that killed the Pines seaplane. The Pines dock was private, controlled by FIPPOA (the property owners’ association). Mechanism: FIPPOA seized the dock from Pelham Airways in 1983 (unhappy with operations) → mounting resident fear of low-flying planes hitting homes (not just noise) → the 1976 fatal collision on the operator’s record + the 1990 crash into the water off Fire Island → the 1991 Halloween nor’easter + Dec 1992 storm destroyed the bay marinas/docks the service needed → early-’90s termination. Jason’s hunch is correct: “noise” was the polite public reason; the real drivers were the crash record, liability, private-association control, and the loss of the physical dock. (Fire Island Pines Historical Society; FIPPOA.) Still to pull if wanted: Suffolk/Islip/Brookhaven town-board minutes + Newsday for any formal low-altitude restriction.
• Clock-era records — LOCATED. RG 26 “Logs of Lifesaving Stations, 1873–1941” Fire Island station-log volumes at NARA Philadelphia (confirmed units naId 182770182/188/192/196/197 = 1931–33; earlier volumes in the same series). Plus the national “Record of Life Saving Medals Awarded, 1876–1944” — NARA microfilm M2136 (naId 651350009, 718 images, College Park, digitized) — searchable for Fire Island surfmen/keepers who earned medals (Baker family served four generations at Lone Hill/Point O’Woods/Fire Island/Bellport). Next: request the pre-1900 Fire Island/Lone Hill station logs from NARA Philadelphia by station + the medal register for Fire Island names.
• Kirk Davis identity — STILL DEAD. No obituary, no DOB, no service number → cannot hit the 1950 Census or an OMPF. Genuinely blocked until a birth year or service record surfaces.

Arc 2 — The glamour era (1960s–1980s)

• Per the Fire Island Pines Historical Society: the seaplane was “the only way to arrive,” Manhattan → the Pines in ~30–45 min, prized by celebrities precisely because it was fast and indiscreet. Landed in the shallow bay, taxied to a dock.
• Operators identified: Pelham Airways (ran the Pines seaplane dock into the early ’80s); ExcelAire floatplanes from the 23rd Street Skyport on the East River to the Pines (amphibious, ~3 passengers; could also hit JFK/LGA/EWR). Later advertised service via Long Island MacArthur.
• It was a deregulated free-for-all: “there was not much seaplane regulation going on in both Cherry Grove and the Pines. Residents were concerned as they saw seaplanes flying way too close to homes.”

Arc 3 — Why it actually stopped (the convergence, late ’70s → early ’90s)

The Historical Society says use “was terminated in the early ’90s” and attributes it to noise + danger + deregulation. Underneath that one line are hard events:

1. 1976-07-27 — fatal mid-air collision involving the operator. A small plane struck a Pelham Airways seaplane; the small craft went down into a Syosset front yard, killing pilot Robert Thomas, 39, of Nissequogue. The 6 people aboard the seaplane survived. (NYT, “Pilot Killed on L.I. in Air Collision,” 7/27/1976 — abstract: “…after striking seaplane operated by Pelham Airways; 6 safe on second plane.”) → the Fire Island operator already had a death on the record.
2. 1983 — FIPPOA seizes the dock from Pelham Airways, “not happy with the operation procedures.” The community takes operational control — the first institutional move against the operator.
3. 1980s — mounting resident pressure. Growing population + boater traffic + low-flying planes over homes = “a bone of contention.” Fear is explicitly of a plane into a house, not just noise.
4. 1990-08-15 — “Plane Crashes Off Fire Island.” Pilot Kevin Heffernan of Milltown down in 65 feet of water off Fire Island (NYT abstract). (Distinct from the 1970s collision and from the later Globe-Swift crash off the east end that killed Irish immigrant Cyril McLavin.)
5. The marinas and docks were then physically destroyed by the back-to-back catastrophic storms that the NPS logged:
   • Oct 30–Nov 1, 1991 — the “Perfect Storm” / Halloween nor’easter. Sailors Haven and Watch Hill marinas “largely destroyed”; island breached at Old Inlet; ≥6 houses lost.
   • Dec 10–11, 1992 — “worst winter storm of its kind this century.” Up to 100 homes severely damaged, 50–70 ft of dune gone, marina structural damage.
   • A seaplane service that depends on a bay dock loses its ground infrastructure in those two storms. The early-’90s “termination” lines up exactly with the storms that wrecked the docks.
6. 1996-07-17 — TWA Flight 800. 229 dead, 8–10 mi south of Moriches Inlet (the east end of the Fire Island seashore); FIIS rangers recovered bodies and debris for days. Whatever tolerance remained for discretionary low-altitude flying over this exact stretch of Long Island shoreline did not survive 800. The post-800 airspace scrutiny is the lid on the coffin.

So the honest answer to “why did they really stop”: not one villain. A deregulated operator with a fatal collision (1976) → community seizes the dock (1983) → residents afraid of crashes into homes (1980s) → a crash into the ocean (1990) → the two storms that physically destroyed the bay docks (1991, 1992) → and then TWA 800 (1996) hardening the whole corridor. “Noise” was the polite public reason; the real driver was safety + fear of a plane into a house + loss of the physical dock infrastructure. Jason’s suspicion that “noise” is a cover for something is supported — the something is the crash record and the storms, not (on current evidence) anything occult.

Arc 4 — The revival (2018→)

Service came back ~2018 (the Pines dock; Shoreline Aviation / “Fly the Whale”-type operators run NYC↔bay floatplanes again). The 2026 Hamptons-to-East-River floatplane crash (all survived) shows the small-amphib NYC seaplane world is active again.

3. The Missing / never-found layer right here in the bay (ties Paulides to Fire Island)

The NPS Fire Island incident log carries its own “went quiet at the water boundary, found later in searched water” cases — the local echo of the Paulides pattern:

• Dec 1995–Jan 1996: several baymen and duck hunters reported missing in Great South Bay, presumed lost; the bay froze under >1 ft of ice; when it thawed a 50–60-yr-old man’s body surfaced a quarter-mile from Sailors Haven (Jan 22, 1996), unidentified, cause of death unknown.
• June 1997: boater A.C. vanishes off his anchored sailboat in 10 feet of water at Talisman; divers hampered by eelgrass; body found 2 days later.
• Oct 2000: Joseph Glover, lost in a Moriches Inlet boating accident, body rolls ashore ~7 miles away.
• Repeated forced aircraft landings on the beach (1993 two planes out of gas near the Pines; 1995 kit-plane dead-stick near Watch Hill; 2001 Cessna 150 near Smith Point; 2009 “two aircraft incidents in one month”).

The bay is a place where small craft and people cross the land/water edge and are not reliably returned — exactly the environment the float-plane/ELT correlation describes.

4. NARA + next digs (what’s paper-only)

Jason asked specifically for NARA. The seaplane record that isn’t online:

• RG 72 — Records of the Bureau of Aeronautics; RG 80 — General Records of the Dept. of the Navy; RG 38 — Office of the CNO. Look for Naval Air Station Bay Shore (1917–1919/1920): station war diaries, aircraft on hand (Curtiss flying boats/HS-2L), patrol logs over the Great South Bay. NARA College Park (Archives II) + the Navy history command hold these.
• CAB / NTSB accident dockets for the 1976 Pelham Airways collision and the 1990 off-Fire-Island crash — NTSB CAROL database + NARA for pre-1983 CAB files.
• FAA airspace / air-taxi certificate records for Pelham Airways and the 23rd St Skyport operators.
• Suffolk County / Town of Islip & Brookhaven seaplane-landing ordinances from the 1980s–early ’90s — the actual legal instrument that ended it (the “noise” ordinance). Likely only in county/town clerk archives + local press (Newsday, Fire Island News, Fire Island Tide) microfilm.

Still-to-pull (blocked this session)

• NYT full texts of the 1976 and 1990 pieces (Brightdata down; Jina reader hits NYT paywall).
• NPS incident log pages 2–3 (2009→present) — the revival-era aircraft incidents.
• Newsday archive for the early-’90s Fire Island seaplane ordinance fight and any crash that specifically triggered the ban.