Over 50 planes
p. 49 · Read in the full issue
still untraced
In the same jungles of Aus tralian New Guinea and In donesian West Irian are the remains of more than 50 Ameri can, Australian, New Zealand, Dutch and Japanese wartime planes. Many planes lost 1942- 45 in New Guinea have been found, but an officially esti mated 50-plus remain where they fell.
One of the most recent dis coveries was a US Navy Corsair fighter plane which took off November 11, 1943, from one of Admiral “Bull” Halsey’s air craft-carriers at Empress Augusta Bay, on the West coast of Bougainville Island. The pilot, Lieutenant Charles Alfred Pilsbury (Miami, Florida) made strafing runs along Kangu Beach on the southern coast of Bougainville, but did not return.
In April, 1968, an Australian surveyor and an elderly Euro pean missionary took joint credit for finding Pilsbury. For nearly 25 years, the Corsair (the fuse lage almost intact) had lain in thick jungle only 400 yards from the main road from Buin Subdistrict Headquarters to Kangu Beach—and for the past few years, it lay only 20 yards from the edge of a missionary garden.
Pilsbury’s remains were still in the cockpit.