Looking back on an adventure……..

Hi,

In 1988 I was lucky enough to work in New Guinea for a month and of course hoped for some time off to look around for aircraft wrecks………

When I arrived in PNG I had two special things with me, a 1944 AAF silk escape map of New Guinea/New Britain and an original photo taken from an AAF B-24 bombing Cape Hoskins airstrip dated 2/5 (1944).

To my surprise I was told that I was to work for two weeks on New Britain, and within the next few days I had actually landed at Cape Hoskins airport.
At the airport I showed the map and photo to some Missionary Aviation Fellowship pilots and during a very interesting talk they told me that there were still some japanese aircraft just off the runway where the revetments used to be!

Here’s the original AAF photo with some aircraft arrowed………

I went into a plantation next to the runway with one of the pilots and found what was left of two Val dive bombers among the trees.
One had sunk half into the ground with the engine attached but the centre section missing, the other was on it’s u/c minus wheels, half a wing, engine and centre section.
I cleared the jungle from it and had this photo taken………….

That night I had a close look at the photo with a magnifying glass and found the wing shapes of Val dive bombers right where we found the two aircraft that afternoon.
Here’s a close-up……….they look u/s to me as does the runway!

During my stay on the island we made a couple of trips into the jungle to hunt for two rumoured aircraft but one turned out to be a drop-tank (now cut up and made into cooking pots) and the other was a japanese army truck……… a great adventure to an interesting place though.

cheers,

-Flightpath

P.S.
I brought home a couple of parts; one was a small brass nameplate from a melted aircraft compass…. I had it translated by a japanese friend, it was dated 1938, maybe it took part in the Pearl Harbour attack?….. Years later it fell off my desk and my wife sucked it up with the vacuum cleaner….. gone forever:(