Photo ex USAF Museum, Ohio

The rain forests of Northern Australia hold all sorts of secrets, I was lucky enough to be around when one was discovered in 1972. A USAF B-24 Liberator bomber, lost in December 1942 was discovered on top of Hinchinbrook Island, just off the coast of North Queensland. This aircraft had been on route between Brisbane and Cape York; the story was that there with six Australian nurses on board, in addition to the normal crew. The discovery of the wreck was reported to have been made by a local who started to spend US dollars in Lucinda, a local sugar industry town. Apparently he had found some of the aircrew's wallets intact and decided not to tell about his discovery until he had spent the dough. The site was visited by the RAAF, who proceeded to clear the site of the poor crew and passenger's remains. I also heard that a memorial was erected on the site. The guy with all the info was a friend of mine from the Army, Greg Keays. Greg decided to visit the wreck, and invited me along on the trip. Was I going to knock back the chance to check out a 30 year old crash site - which had been barely touched since the accident. No way! We left Townsville pre dawn to launch the borrowed dingy from Lucinda just after dawn. As the crash site was on top of a 3200 ft "mountain" (Mt Straloch), and the climb was through tropical rain forest, with no tracks to follow, we planned for an overnight stop on the mountain. The short trip across Hinchinbrook Channel went with no dramas. The only way up to the wreck was via a "creek" bed - there were no tracks. To find the creek Greg had to pick the correct channel into the mangrove swamp at the Southern end of the island. We went up one of the channels and tied the boat up before starting the trek into the mangroves. Getting through the mangroves was an experience on it's own. Sinking into the mud up to your shins and scrambling over mangrove roots. Hitting terra firma was a relief, and it turned out to be in the right spot as well! Next came the climb up the "mountain". The creek bed was dry, the only difference between it and the surrounding forest was that the earth had been washed out from between the boulders. This made the going difficult, but as there was no undergrowth in the "creek" it was climbable. It wasn't long before the mosquito's hit, and the repellant we had wasn't doing a good job. The mozzies got so bad that we abandoned the idea of staying overnight and decided to leave our gear and "sprint" to the top and back again. I have never seen mozzies as bad before or since that day, we must have been the only meat around! It was pretty hard yakka but eventually we came across the tail of the aircraft, in pretty good condition, still with the aircraft numbers on it. It was a good way down from the main wreck. Next we came across one blade of a propeller, which had been cut off with a hacksaw. Some nong had tried to bring it down, by throwing it from rock to rock, eventually giving up after a couple of hundred feet. The blade was getting so knocked about in the process, it wouldn't have made much of a souvenir anyway. Finally we popped out of the overgrowth and there we were as the crash site. Poor buggers had hit just down from the top of the mountain, another 100 ft or so higher and they would have cleared it. There had obviously been a fire, although not all of the plane was burnt. The amazing thing was that the crash was not seen or heard, Lucinda is less than 10 km away, in clear sight. Apparently the crash had happened during a storm, in which case the crash site would have been obscured by clouds, the crash may have sounded like distant thunder, and the fire would have gone out by the time the clouds cleared.

There were a couple of 50 cal machine guns laying in the rubble, and the radio equipment wasn't in bad condition. Everything in front of the wings was disintegrated. Perhaps because of the steepness of the mountain, or perhaps the aircraft was descending, but the wreckage was pretty much all in the one pile, exactly where it hit. Two of the engines and the undercarriage were in basically the right spot, the tail had fallen/flew/rolled/blown down the hill a couple of hundred feet. The outboard engines were not seen. There was 50 cal ammo everywhere, some had exploded, some not. I sampled a couple of projectiles, and later found that one was a copper jacketed steel projectile (armour piercing). I peeled the copper off and used it as a centre punch for ages. Still in the toolbox somewhere. One interesting discovery was the heavy steel plates which had been fitted behind and underneath the crew seating. They were made of about 12 mm steel plate, the surprising thing was that they had been cut using an oxy cutter, with little attempt to clean up the edges. Not your usual aircraft engineering. Must have added a bit to the weight of the plane, but what's a extra few hundred kilos - when it comes to saving your bacon? There was no memorial on the site. Some info on the B-24 Liberator (courtesy USAF Museum) SPECIFICATIONS Span: 110 ft. 0 in. Length: 66 ft. 4 in. Height: 17 ft. 11 in. Weight: 56,000 lbs. loaded Armament: Ten .50-cal. machine guns and 8,000 lbs. of bombs Engines: Four Pratt & Whitney R-1830s of 1,200 hp. ea. Cost: US$336,000 PERFORMANCE Maximum speed: 303 mph. Cruising speed: 175 mph. Range: 2,850 miles. Service Ceiling: 28,000 ft.

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