PNG WW2 aircraft wrecks

[Mike Kelly]

This is a interesting site.


The air battles that took place over PNG during WW2 , are somewhat overlooked and forgotten about in the general scheme of things today.

http://www.pacificwrecks.com/history/salvage/

I met a WW2 Japanese aircraft historian , a VMVC member, at the first club meeting I attended in 1976. He had travelled to places like Rabaul in the mid 1960's , photographing many Jap aircraft wrecks around the islands.

[motto]

Thanks for the link Mike. I have been personally acquainted with a number of the PNG wrecks listed and some of the characters involved since the early 70s and it's rare to see anything 'in print' so to speak.
Aircraft losses in that area during the war were quite high due to a combination of circumstances, inexperienced crews, extreme and rapidly changing weather conditions, confusing and mountainous terrain, heavily laden aircraft. Even without the presence of a determined enemy it is a dangerous place to aviate. Cumulogranite still claims the unwary and the story is told in the wreckage scattered all over the country.
Added to this were the aircraft simply abandoned on airfields as the war moved on, or in the case of Japanese aircraft particularly, many were destroyed on the ground.
No mention is made of the situation in Irian Jaya or West Irian, the western half of the island controlled by the Indonesians. In the 70s it was inaccessible with a large amount of aircraft wrecks still relatively untouched. Probably all cleaned out now by the scrappies.

David

[Mike Kelly]

I went to high school with a kid, he told us of his dads wartime pilot days, being shot down over Germany ..a unusual surname .

Anyway , a few years back I found a book in a op shop .. this same guy was featured in the book . After his POW days , he came home and he was in a special RAAF unit after the war , the same chap ! His unit had a lugger and they traveled all over PNG looking for missing aircraft .Among many wrecks, they found mass graves of aircrew , executed .

The kid and his father played cricket in a local team and I met them again in 1972 . My cricket career was short

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Well worth getting this book if you're interested in this subject. It was first published in 1979 and then re-published in 1986. I bought my copy in 1989 and still find it fascinating to browse through every now and then.

Subtitle "Where to find them" - one has to realise a lot has changed since Charles Darby (and others) mapped out these wrecks. Fates range from being scrapped to being recovered, restored, or rebuilt to flying condition. It think the latest wreck to be recovered is the B17E 41-2446 "Swamp Ghost" - see http://www.pacificaviationmuseum.org...s-swamp-ghost2