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This particular crash was in 1971 in the middle of the Peruvian rainforest. I'm not sure when portable infrared cameras became available, but I doubt they were widely had around this time, and doesn't seem like it crashed near any major cities with air force bases nearby, so while the technology may have existed, I wouldn't be surprised if they were too expensive to just keep lying around waiting to be used.


Counting the rich wildlife of such forests along with high density of trees, would spotting a human in all that noise even possible?


I think you will find infrared was advance enough by 1971. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared#History_of_infrared_sc...

If they could afford to fly search planes overhead I can't see cost being the issue that prevented them from doing the search more efficiently.


> I think you will find infrared was advance enough by 1971

It was not. The link you posted says that only film infrared was available then, and that would not be helpful for searching in a jungle.

And even in 1978 the best they could do was a resolution of 64x64 which isn't enough to identify a human from an animal.




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