The tin birds of the Pacific

Few planes survived crash-landing in the Second World War. Simon Williams reports on some of the rare complete wrecks that divers have found in recent years in the South Pacific. Photographs by Michael Pitts…

Photo: Michael Pitts Photo: Michael Pitts Photo: Michael Pitts Photo: Michael Pitts Photo: Michael Pitts

Papua New Guinea captures the imagination like no other place on Earth. The more we learn about this mysterious part of the world the more, it seems, remains to be discovered. As recently as the late 1990s, tribes were being discovered that had had no previous contact with the outside world. It is truly a ‘last frontier’. Strange to think that less than a decade after a major ‘first contact’ with thousands of Stone Age tribes of the New Guinea highlands in the 1930s, two advanced technological superpowers were waging a war on its shores and vying for power in the South Pacific. It is no surprise that tales of ‘tin birds’ and burning metal falling from the skies appear in local legends. Most of the native people from the island’s near-impenetrable interior had no idea that these supernatural occurrences were the the activities of men, and not the gods.

Today the remnants of this titanic struggle are dotted across the region: from sunken battleships in Chuuk to fortified cave complexes in Rabaul. The Second World War wrecks of warships provide some of the best diving in the world. But the tin birds that fell out of the sky prove to be far more elusive. Most of the relatively flimsy planes broke up on impact, either in the jungle or the ocean. It is rare to find complete, virtually intact wrecks of fighting planes.

The island of New Britain to the east of mainland New Guinea provided the setting for one of the most significant battles of the Second World War. The Japanese realised that the town of Rabaul, with its excellent natural harbour, was a threat to their base at Truk Island. They therefore saw the seizure of New Britain as essential to securing their position in the South Pacific. A seaborne assault on Rabaul was accordingly made on 22 January 1942, and the town was quickly taken. At this stage of the war, the air campaign intensified on both sides and many planes went down.
Some 58 years later in 2000, a native fisherman named William Nui was free-diving for sea cucumbers very close to shore in Kimbe Bay when he caught sight of a large shadow on the sea bed. Being somewhat superstitious, his first thought was that he was looking at a ghost lying face-up with its arms outstretched, soaking up the sun. He surfaced terrified, but eventually summoned up enough courage to have a closer look at the motionless apparition on the sea bed. Diving deeper, he realised he was looking at an aeroplane wreck and went to tell the authorities.

Subsequent exploration and identification of the find was made by Max and Cecilie Benjamin, who run the diving centre at Walindi Plantation Resort in Kimbe Bay. Cecilie in particular has a very good knowledge of Second World War history in the region and is an enthusiastic collector of material on the subject.

Max now admits that he didn’t actually believe the reported find at first, but went out to take a look anyway and was astonished by what he saw. The plane – which has been underwater for nearly 60 years – is in surprisingly good condition and shows no sign of having been shot down in combat. It is most likely that the pilot made a controlled water landing close to the shore, after having become lost and running out of fuel. According to Cecilie Benjamin, the absence of any bullet holes and the positions of the controls back up this theory. The throttle lever is in the ‘off’ position, and the pitch control is set to reduce air speed. The fact that the aileron cables are broken also suggests a ‘pancake’ landing.

Piecing together anecdotal and factual evidence about missing Japanese aircraft and their pilots, Max and Cecilie are virtually certain that the Zero fighter went missing during the battle of Cape Gloucester on West New Britain on 26 December 1944. As for the pilot, nobody seems to know what happened to him. A local story suggests that the native people helped get him to the nearby village of Talasea, but what happened after that remains a mystery. It is not possible to identify the pilot based on the aircraft’s serial number and date – which are still visible on the wreck – because the same plane would have been flown by different pilots. It seems there was a great loss of honour in losing a fighter plane, so one theory is that the pilot, whoever he was, may have simply changed his identity and deserted after the crash.

The Zero fighter was a key weapon for the Japanese. It maintained a superiority in performance and skill over enemy fighters. However, a number of factors led to a decline in its effectiveness, notably the gradual loss of experienced pilots. Surprisingly, a great many flying aces were lost, not through battle but because they lost their bearings and ran out of fuel. This was probably the case with the Walindi Zero.
By the end of 1942, only ten Zero pilots had been lost in air combat, whereas 16 disappeared due to ‘unknown causes’. Around this time, the balance of power in the South Pacific changed, and the air superiority swung to the Allies. Soon after, the Japanese suffered a humiliating defeat in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea in March 1943, and their war was more or less over.

During a recent filming trip to Papua New Guinea, cameraman Mike Pitts and I were fortunate enough to spend a month at Walindi, recording wildlife both in and out of the water for a future BBC series. When we heard about the discovery, we made a point of diving the Zero during breaks in our filming schedule. It’s an easy dive in 17m of water, and when the sea is calm (as it often is at this spot), the outline of the plane can be seen from the surface. The fact that the Zero has remained unmolested for such a long time is remarkable, since it is quite close to shore near to an old logging camp. The only part to have been removed is the gun sight, which was taken by a British diver who later handed it over to Max Benjamin.

It’s a very serene resting place for such an instrument of war. The forest surrounding the bay is spectacular, and the towering volcanoes that line the horizon lend the location a magical quality. Another tin bird which has survived is a US B-25 Mitchell bomber which was found at Madang on the northern coast of New Guinea in 1990. The plane was lost during an attack on Japanese shipping lying at anchor in Madang Bay in 1942. It was hit by flak and crash-landed in the bay. The three-man crew of the aircraft, which was nicknamed Damn Rebel Yank, escaped the sinking plane and swam to a nearby island but were caught and summarily executed on the beach by Japanese troops. Today Damn Rebel Yank sits upright in 23m of water. Unfortunately, the mid-upper turret Perspex was smashed by a diver trying to retrieve the gun sight.

In another remote and hardly explored corner of the Pacific, the Japanese held another crucial base. It was called Shortlands and was on one of a series of tiny islands off the far northwestern tip of the Solomons archipelago close to the island of Bougainville. Here, a natural, protected anchorage, lying between islands enveloped in jungle, was used by the Imperial Japanese Navy not for ships, but for seaplanes. They deployed these float planes extensively in the Pacific theatre for long-range reconnaissance, as well as ferrying troops and attacking US forces and shipping.

The massive four-engine Kawanishi H8K2 was perfect for this role. It had a 3,000-mile range and could stay in the air for 18 hours. The Americans codenamed them ‘Emily’ and they were well defended with an array of cannon and machine guns. At Shortlands more than ten Kawanishis and other float plans were moored. The Americans were determined to destroy them.

In the early hours of 29 March 1943 a squadron of Lockheed P-38 Lightnings took off from Guadalcanal. They flew low and undetected across the seas towards their objective. Pandemonium broke out as the American flyers swept in and strafed the vulnerable aircraft. The anti-aircraft gun crews – located on the hilltops either side of the channel – were alerted by the roar of the engines and opened fire. But it was too late. Riddled with shell, seven Emilys and several smaller planes sank at their moorings. The Americans escaped unscathed.

Sixty years on and 60 feet down, these giants of the air now sit on the sea bed in clear blue waters – rare survivors from a total war which claimed so many.