Look at this photo from the Aussie magazine Flightpath, Vol 6 No 3 (from some years ago) showing an airfield in New Guinea called Nadzab.
The caption said it was taken in 1946, and these were cannibalised spare airframes of the US forces. Among the wrecks are apparently 6 Liberators, a Mitchell and a number of single seaters including what appears to be a P47 Razorback.
What I’d like o know is, was anything recovered from there during the warbird hunts in PNG during the 1960’s-70’s or since?
By: Dave Homewood - 4th October 2005 at 04:06
Cheers John. Yes I thought most of this would have been scrapped. I can’t blame the locals at all, but it would be nice nowadays if they could be made aware that there’s also money in saving airframes and selling them to overseas buyers.
It is good to hear that some aircraft have been recovered from that area at least.
Cheers
Dave
By: setter - 4th October 2005 at 03:54
Hi Dave
Throughout the 50s-70s and really right up to now, large scale scrapping took place throughout the pacific theatre and was done with either on site smelters or the aircraft were cut into small bits and packed into trucks and barges and removed that way – it was pretty systematic and efficent which is why to this day only a fraction remains. Nadzab was a large base and was ideal for scrappers because so much material was available in such a small area so a lot was scrapped and little remained . Some aircraft did however remain to be recovered and some of the P38 /P39 / P40 and P47s recovered recently came from Nadzab – Have a slow read through the warbirdsresources site (The registry ) and you will see that a lot of the wrecks currently in NZ, Aus and the USA came from Nadzab – Mostly they were remote on the site or buried and thats what saved them from the smelter.
Natives are still scrapping aircraft to earn some money as they have few other ways to earn cash so it is still an issue and sadly wrecks still often turn up at PNG scrap metal yards – It is a survival thing so you can’t blame them .
I think a lot more aircraft will come out of PNG but it will never be an easy place to travel or deal in – fortunately at present a lot of progress is being made.
Regards
John P
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October 3, 2005 at 2:58 pm