Crashed Planes

Will Fly Again

The biggest airplane repair job known in the P-NG Territory has just been successfully completed at Goroka. The Gibbes Airways Junker which was smashed up at Wau in January, 1957, is again in the air, earning its living, with a new wing and a new rear fuselage.

MR. GIBBES bought three Junkers in Sweden in 1955 and they were successfully flown out. But one of them, within its

first week of operation, took a wrong turning at Wau, and was wrecked.

The big plane was taken to pieces, and placed on lorries and Mr. Jack Thick, by a series of transportation miracles, took it from Wau to the Markham Bridge, and thence by the Markham-Ramu Road (which still lacks some important bridges) to Goroka.

There, in recent years, Gibbes Airways has established a large, well-equipped workshop, which is licensed also to service propellers and other essential activities which keep aircraft flying.

With the three Junkers, Mr.

Gibbes brought out two German technicians and their families, and he got another two skilled Germans

from Australia —and these men and their families constitute an impor tant little section of the Goroka community.

There are 11 European technicians in the workshops. Half the wrecked Junkers was completely rebuilt.

A Gibbes Norseman, whose engine failed near Lake Copiago (Southern Highlands) some time ago, force landed and turned over on its back in the jungle, and looked a write off. Eut they cut it up, carried it laboriously 40 miles over jungle tracks to Tari, flew it out to Goroka —and it will fly again.

Bobby Gibbes, always the optimist, says they probably will end by building their own planes at Goroka.