Bringing The Heroes Home

Out Of The Past

By Maclaren Hiari

The quest to find, and bury, the lost airmen ofWWII.

THE search to retrieve, identify and bury with full military honours the remains of some 2000 Allied air men both Americans and Australians lying in the jungles, swamps and waters of Papua New Guinea is continuing 43 years after World War II ended.

From Port Moresby to Lae, Goroka and Madang, or in a multitude of other places, the remains of aircraft four decades old are still lying in the matted undergrowth.

It was then a time of war, and the skies were filled with Liberator, Fortress, Mitchell and Havoc bombers, Airocobra, Kittyhawk, Thunderbolt and Lightning fighters and Dakota transport aircraft.

Their crews were young men, filled with the vigour of youth.

For hundreds of these young warriors, this land was to become their final resting place lost, but not forgotten, on some cloud-covered mountain or hidden among the foliage of a lowland rainforest. Their mortal remains lie amid the shattered wreckage of what was once a proud fighter, bomber or transport aircraft.

Most of the remains will never be found, despite combined efforts by agencies of the Papua New Guinea, Australian and US Governments. Many, however, have been located and re-buried in one of the Allied war cemeteries that dot PNG. For many more, their only memory is the words: “Missing in action, presumed dead”.

At the end of the war, the Royal Aus tralian Air Force, in conjunction with the United States Graves Registration Serv ice, mounted an extensive program to search for, and locate, Allied aircraft still missing. In the course of this program, which lasted for almost 40 years, a large number of aircraft were located: it seems incredible until one sees the terrain that aircraft are still being found.

The responsibility for continuing this program is now vested in the War Mu seum of the National Museum and Art Gallery in Port Moresby. The War Mu seum is responsible for documenting and recording aircraft losses incurred by Aus tralia, the US, New Zealand and Japan during World War 11. Extensive records are now held on most US aircraft, and many Australian losses. Information is being added every day: the latest recovery of the remains of three American and one Aus tralian airmen in the jungles of Oro Prov ince, in south-eastern PNG, is a good example of this combined effort, with the assistance of the local people.

An Orokavian man, Frank Egiamban, while on a hunting trip in July, 1986, found

the crash site of an American C-47, or DC 3, transport plane at the northern end of Middle Embi Lake, about 15 kilometres south-east of Popondetta. The plane, which carried a crew of three Americans and one Australian, was shot down on No vember 26, 1942, by Japanese fighter planes. When US troops reached the scene of the crash all the occupants were dead, and in the confusion prevailing at the time the battle of Buna was about to be fought the bodies were not recovered.

Mr Egiambari reported his find to lo cal wartime enthusiast David Penne father, who has had previous experience in locating and examining war relics. Both men visited the crash site and Pennefather discovered skeletal remains when he was sorting through debris. He contacted Bruce Hoy, Curator of the War Museum, who in formed the RAAF in Canberra.

The plane was indentified as a C-47 nicknamed Swamp Rat. It belonged to the 6th Troop Carrier Squadron of the 374th Troop Carrier Group, and the Australian crew member was its co-pilot.

In December, 1986, a two-man inves tigating team from the US Army Central Identification Office in Hawaii, Sergeants Randy Nash and Tom Baughman, spent a week in Popondetta and visited the crash site. Accompanied by Culture and Tour ism Development Officer Simon Akai and myself Maclaren Hiari, Senior Projects Officer with the Department of Oro the team photographed pieces of wreckage and prepared a crash-site sketch.

Further investigation revealed addi tional wreckage at the top of an 85-degree incline, at a distance of 60 metres from the main crash site. Remains of landing gear were found on the ridge and photo graphed: altogether wreckage on the ridge was scattered over a distance of 30 metres.

The US Army Central Identification Laboratory also sent a 12-man team to Oro Province in June, 1987, to recover the re mains of the four crew members.

A large portion of the aircraft re mained above ground and various parts of it were identifiable, though detached on impact. Swamp Rat had come to rest in dense jungle approximately two and a half hours walk from the old Dobuduru Air base, from which it took off on its last flight. The wreck itself sits at the bottom of a deep gully. It had hardly been affected by the elements over 46 years, though some bones were found buried about 40 centi metres beneath the jungle leaf litter.

A more detailed inspection of the crash site established that the plane dislodged its

wings as it ploughed through the trees: one wing was found on a slope about 40 metres from where the fuselage came to rest. Most of the wreck was in one spot, though pieces were found not far from the main wreck.

The CIL team spent three days in the jungle, painstakingly mapping and peg ging out the crash site and sifting through the remains. Some skeletal remains, dis covered earlier by Pennefather, were already evident. The team wanted to find the rest of the remains, if any, and to try to establish if any other personnel were in the plane at the time of the crash.

Various items from the plane were un covered within a small radius around the crash site: radios, a compass, flare pistols, gun cleaning kits and uniform buckles.

Bone fragments were uncovered just for ward of the cockpit area. Several teeth and portions of a skull, or skulls, were located a few centimetres below ground level. It was apparent the plane’s occupants had been projected forward among the wreck age of the cockpit. The bone fragments were placed in boxes for their journey back to Honolulu.

The team also found an RAAF identi fication tag, which confirmed the pres ence of the lone Australian airman at the time of the crash. The wreckage was then left as it had been dismantled.

To those who stumble across an air craft wreck, a word of warning: most air craft were carrying live ammunition, bombs, flares and oxygen cylinders at the time they crashed. Nothing should be picked up or removed from the wreckage, but its location and serial number, if vis ible (large yellow or white numbers painted on the tail, or a series of numbers painted below the pilot’s side window) should be reported to the National Museum, avia tion, maritime and war branch, which will arrange for a Defence Force team to visit the wreckage.

There are still 360 missing aircraft from the American sth and 13th Air Forces in PNG: 148 fighters, 163 bombers, 21 trans ports and 28 miscellaneous aircraft types, representing more than 1500 personnel. Of this number, approximately 35 per cent are thought to have crashed into the sea.

The War Museum has not completed its research into missing Australian, New Zealand and Japanese aircraft, but it is hoped authorities in these countries will assist. With the help of the villager on a hunting trip, the forestry survey worker, the geologist or bushwalker, many of these aircraft will be found in the years to come. n