Search is on for WWII (PNG) wreckage

[Story]

AN AUSTRALIAN payroll plane that went missing at the end of World War II with 19 people on board might have been found in just 20 metres of water in Papua New Guinea.

Divers in Milne Bay have reported seeing the remains of a twin-engined plane in the exact same spot pinpointed by documents that were recently uncovered by an aviation historian in Canberra.

Now a diving boat skipper, who has found other plane wrecks in PNG waters, is planning an expedition to find the missing plane.

Historian Bob Piper said the RAAF Douglas C-47 took off from Gurney airstrip at Milne Bay just before 10am on September 11, 1945, with pilot Flight Lieutenant Eric Beer at the controls. It was bound for an airfield near Lae on the north coast.

On board were three crew and 16 passengers including Lieutenant Noel Williams, a former Commonwealth Bank employee carrying a payroll of more than £2000, the equivalent of $500,000 in today's money.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/search-is-on-for-wwii-wreckage/2008/02/16/1202760662788.html

 

[Story]

Fred Hargesheimer was shot down in the southwest Pacific on June 5, 1943. A lifetime later, he sits in his quiet California ranch house amid the snow and soaring sugar pines of the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The light blue eyes, at age 91, can't see as well as they once did. But when he looks back over 65 years, the smiling Minnesotan sees it all clearly — the struggle to survive, the native rescuers, the Japanese patrols and narrow escapes, the mother's milk that saved him. He remembers well his return to New Britain, the people's embrace, the fundraising and building, the children taught, the adults cured, the happy years beside the Bismarck Sea with Dorothy, his wife.

"I'm so grateful for getting shot out of the sky," he says.

Garua Peni is grateful, too, as a member of those once-future generations here on New Britain.

"I thank God from the depths of my heart for blessing me in such an abundant way when He brought Suara Auru Fred Hargesheimer," she says.

The improbable story of "Mastah Preddi," a story of uncommon gratitude and the heart's uncanny ways, begins when the 27-year-old Army lieutenant crashes to the tangled underbrush of the jungle floor.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080308/ap_on_re_au_an/mastah_preddi;_ylt=AkqzGQsqNVhc2TRh1HvyVVwDW7oF

 

[KilroyCD]

What a great article. Thank you very much for posting the link.

 

[Story]

An American missionary familiar with Papua New Guinea's jungle will lead a Royal Australian Air Force recovery team to what remains of a World War II bomber wreck.

*

The Hudson A16-126 wreck is thought to have been shot down during a mission to attack Japanese shipping at Gasmata Harbour on February 11, 1942.

Lost were Flying Officer Graham Gibson, Pilot Officer Frank Thorn, Sergeant Barton Coutie and Sergeant Arthur Quail.

New Tribes Mission member Reichmann and his son Jared spotted the twin-engine bomber, built by US firm Lockheed, after many failed attempts searching over a year.

http://news.theage.com.au/world/raaf-to-search-for-wwii-remains-in-png-20081003-4t10.html

See also
http://www.pacificwrecks.com/aircraft/hudson/A16-126.html
and
http://www.pacificghosts.com.au/priam/view_aircraft.asp?id=A16-126

 

[Story]

UNDER blazing sun, with drenching humidity and temperatures hovering at 100 degrees, Alfred "Fred" Hagen finally saw the belly of the World War II bomber that he had worked so hard to salvage rising out of a grassy Papua New Guinea swamp.

The Bucks County man was most worried about keeping the six-ton fuselage, weighted with water, in one piece. As a helicopter began lifting it, Hagen, on the plane's separated right wing, grew nervous.

"The fuselage was going up and down, kind of teetering," he said. "My stomach was just churning. I was worried he wasn't going to be able to do it . . . He just lifted it and he flew it off."

That moment was one "of exultation; knowing that after 10 years of labor and problems and setbacks and all the horrific things that I had to endure to get to that point that my biggest fear and obstacle in the actual salvage had been overcome . . . I was jumping in the air and thrusting my hands in the air," he said.

That was May 2006.

It would take Hagen another three years and eight months to get the B-17E Flying Fortress, nicknamed the "Swamp Ghost," onto a ship bound for New Zealand, where it is now waiting to travel by ship to Los Angeles, expected to arrive mid-April. He has an agreement to display his prize at the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Ariz.

Hagen, 52, who runs a construction business in Bensalem, is an aircraft and history enthusiast whose great-uncle was killed in Papua New Guinea during World War II. For the last decade he has been fixated on the B-17E Swamp Ghost, which he first spotted in 1996, then stepped foot on the following year.

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/86704107.html?cmpid=15585797

 

[Story]

LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) -- A B-17 bomber that lay in a New Guinea swamp for decades after being forced down during a World War II combat mission has been returned to the United States after years of salvage efforts.

The forward fuselage of the so-called "Swamp Ghost" was displayed Friday at the Port of Long Beach in an emotional, patriotic ceremony attended by kin of some of the now-deceased aircrew.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SWAMP_GHOST?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

 

[Chas]

Re: the payroll plane. I'm wondering what they expect to find. 2K pounds in paper money. Under the ocean. For 60 years.