Hi James–

Thanks much for that reminder that things are always more complex than they might seem.

The references to tourism and to the Boston airframe stored in Oz on behalf of the PNG museum give me ideas: What’s the chance funds could be raised to put up an uncomplicated steel hangar at one of the old airfields, perhaps a cooperative venture between PNG and the west? Doesn’t need to be an AAM type structure to be sound and serviceable…and the treasures that could then be housed right in the environs where this major campaign was fought, would surely be a tourist draw far beyond a crumbling alloy hulk in the bush (however eerie and poignant the latter is). Is this worth thinking about, or is it just nuts?

Cheers

S.

PS–one irrelevant quibble: the AAM Liberator came from Lackland (Texas), not Castle (California)…but yeah, she was rough.

New Guinea is a very hostile place unfortunately – not for the remains of aeroplanes necessarily, but for people. The capital of PNG is Port Morsby and unfortunately the level of lawlessness is very high. The “Rascals” are a group of people who make live very unpleasant for people in the area.

The unfortunate thing is that it is getting worse, not better and there is a long time to go before the “general” toursits will be safe in that region of the world.

My opinion is get them out and preserve them – better still rebuild them. Aeroplanes were built to fly and that is what they should do. That’s a pilots point of view, but I am holding to it. If I didn’t hold that view then the 150+ people I have taken for a ride in my Tiger Moth wouldn’t have had the experience. A couple of people would have seen the remains of a Tiger stored in a shed somewhere. The remains of my Percival Proctor would have long disappeared, instead it will fly again some day.

Someone who doesn’t fly may hold a different perspective – their interest being in the smaller details and the history side of things, I do to a point but saving a bunch of bits rather than saving the whole seems a bit of a waste of time to me. The bits are interesting, the whole is better!