MU2 disappearance - NTSB report anomaly

Excuse my ignorance - but doing some research on an ancient plane disappearance - a Mitsubishi MU-2J between Majuro, Marshall islands and Cairns Australia on Dec 9, 1988 - and trying to reconcile that craft’s rated range, about 1200 nautical miles, with the distance that was to be covered, which is I think close to 2100 nautical miles.
NTSB crash report does not mention refueling stops - what am I missing???

Auxiliary tanks

Thanks for that. They must be a fair size to add that much range.
My guess had been that there must have been a “technical” stop for fuel which didn’t count in the scheme of events.

I haven’t read the NTSB report so I don’t know what the pilot’s plans were. If you are going from A to C via a refueling stop at B, you’d file B as your destination. If the destination was 900 miles beyond maximum range and they didn’t indicate an intention to make a fuel stop, then they would have had to have auxiliary/ferry tanks installed for the trip.

What was the tail number of the aircraft in question?

Hi, thanks for the answer on the auxiliary tanks - the tail number was N296MA.
Kinda cruel these reports - they do not really name the pilot who perished.

The object of the reports is to report on facts (what happened, why it happened, and recommendations on how it could have possibly been prevented. Also, how it could be prevented in the future).

As cold has it might sound, the name of the pilot isn’t really germane to these reports.

That said, I find reading accidents reports fascinating. Quite often, it’s not one thing but several small things that occur to cause the accident.

True, and in this case, this looks like an accident waiting to happen - two previous pilots walked out and the third appears to have had insufficient experience with notoriously tricky MU2s in weather.