A New Guinea lake full of P-38's

Dan Jones · **Posted:** Sun May 28, 2006 5:42 pm

Now that I have your attention...

One of the other pilot's drifted into the maintenance office here at work between trips (where I'm hijacking their computer to write this) and was reading the Swamp Ghost thread over my shoulder. Turns out that he used to fly in the New Guinea interior in the seventies. He asked me if I'd ever heard of a freshwater lake south of Nadzab full of P-38's. He showed me on a poor quality map about where it is; no more than 20 miles south of the old Nadzab airfield, just south of a river. The story he was told was that aircraft returning to Nadzab would ditch here if the weather was out at the field (which it often is, he says) instead of crashing into the jungle full of substantially thick trees.

If anybody's got a good quality map (preferably a VFR aeronautical chart) send it to me and I'll get him to mark the spot.

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Dan

setter · **Posted:** Sun May 28, 2006 10:12 pm

Well there are definately some in a lot of lakes there - so who is the brave sould who is going to PNG tp raise this stuff - still definately one i have in my head for the future if things calm down

I can do the map if you PM me but there are a lot of lakes not just one

Regards
John p

Jungle Bob · **Joined:** Mon Dec 06, 2004 2:36 am **Posts:** 49

Forget about the hostile locals, what about teh crocodiles?

setter · **Posted:** Sun May 28, 2006 11:26 pm

JG - Bugger the Crocs mate - the snakes scare the S%^t out of me not to mention the vicous Public servants!!
John P

RickH · **Posted:** Sun May 28, 2006 11:33 pm

Dan you couldn't have got more attention if you walked into a room and threw a hand grenade ! :lol:

setter · **Posted:** Mon May 29, 2006 1:44 am

Hi all there should be no secret about this issue

Wherever there are aircraft operated in difficult conditions there are machines which wind up in lakes for the obvious reasons that nobody wants to crash into trees etc

Done properly a lake is a much better option than a forest hence the recent spate of good lake recoveries around the world.

Lakes also have the advantages of preserving the condition of the machines better and hiding them from scrappers.

Lakes also become the ideal place to dump discarded aircraft as "out of sight out of mind" kicks in.

So in most theatres of war a lake is always a good place to start and there are stories about both ditchings and dumpings in PNG and the Islands in General.

RER has for some time expounded a theory about a certain lake .......

I would still be nervous about such an undertaking at present ..... wait till things calm a bit but research is different

Regards
John P

airnutz · **Posted:** Mon May 29, 2006 1:46 am

Jungle Bob wrote:

Forget about the hostile locals, what about the crocodiles?

If you'll hold yer tongue around the girlfriends and wives, this'll not be a problem!
Onward with the project...The legendary Lightning burial ground....

DaveM2 · **Posted:** Mon May 29, 2006 2:41 am

Why bother, with all those P-38s being uncovered in the Clarke Field area :wink:

With the problem getting stuff out of PNG brings..anyone remember this......from last year? Deafening silence since then....

"10 unidentified US WW2 aircraft are reportedly going to be salvaged from Lake Tengano in the Solomans"

Dave

Digger · **Posted:** Mon May 29, 2006 3:12 am

My repsonse is a story told to me recently (last 3 years) by a friend of a friend. Its one of those 'a good mate of mine' which may only mean something to the local Aussies.

The story goes something like.......

My mate got told about a heap of aircraft in a lake in PNG. Crickey, that can't be too hard to find and then recover the aircraft, simple. So of they go, hiring a helicopter, magnetometer and other gizmo's that go beep and ping. They set about flying up and down in a rough grid like search pattern and suddenly they get some interesting results up on the screen. There was something in the water, near the northern edge. So back home they go and plan the next phase. returning with dive gear and floatation equipment they set off. After several hours of working through weed, mud, snags they find a pile of dumped surplus equipment, which included trucks, generators and everything else that needed to be disposed of. returning to the shore after a very dissapointing day, they were set upon by what they described was a 'prehistoric' Croc, it had to be 30 foot long!
or so they reckon. So, after spending all their cash and time they located a dump site, recovered nothing and possibly rediscovered a previously thought extinct species of Croc.

The moral of the story is, do your research. It will save you a lot of time and $$$$$$. And don't forget to take the Grog along to drown the sorrows and take a mate along with you, that way its a 50 - 50 chance you'll get eaten.

Digger

Chicoartist · **Posted:** Mon May 29, 2006 3:38 am

VFR Sectional? Hell with that! GoogleEarth that puppy!

First GoogleEarth image shows a "lake" (or whatever) 6 miles SE as the crow flies. I think that's the lake Gentile's Shangri-La is in! Yeah!:

Here's an image with a 20 mile-long line drawn due south of the field:

Wade

Dan Jones · **Posted:** Mon May 29, 2006 7:42 am

Rob - warbirds@shaw.ca - it should be in my profile. Mark it something obvious so I don't accidentally de-spam it.

Yes, Murphy's Law being what it is I'd say look for the lake with the largest population of giant freshwater crocs and I'd say that that would be the one! He figured he could nail it down to which lake exactly with an old VFR chart as that's how he got around everywhere back then. It's amazing what you can remember looking at an old, once familiar map. He also mentioned three A-26s (A-20s probably) sitting together parked in a meadow - standing on their gear, but remember, this was thirty years ago now. He's also gonna transfer all his slides to CD for me.

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Dan

Chicoartist · **Posted:** Mon May 29, 2006 2:03 pm

Col. Rohr wrote:

. . . But who cares about some little old Croc. throw them a nice Politian and they are happy for a few hours.

Can I go first? Got several in the local area nobody will miss one bit!

Wade

tom d. friedman · **Posted:** Mon May 29, 2006 9:27 pm

believe it or not, there are still uncharted areas of new guinea to this day!!! it's that thick with foliage!!

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A New Guinea lake full of P-38's

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