Readers of this thread may be wondering why I have spent some 24 years on this project and have visited the jungle multiple times in search of the wreck seen in 1945 by members of an Australian Army Patrol… The veterans from that patrol were convinced that what they saw had been in the jungle for quite a few years. No military insignia was seen.
There are still many WWII aircraft which are missing in New Guinea now known as Papua New Guinea. Occasionally one of these missing WWII aircraft is found by the local people and notified to the authorities, These missing aircraft are mainly found by logging personnel or by local people out hunting game. Of late these missing aircraft are regarded as something from the past and the importance of reporting them in has diminished somewhat and sometimes, the owners of the land will now ask for money before they will lead researchers to them.
In the case of the aircraft wreck we seek, besides the WWII Patrol members who saw wreckage, only one local man has reported seeing it and he was the same man who it has been told to me, buried it with the help of the bulldozer he was using to make tracks through the forest. I have explained the tribal reason as to why he did that.
Our main evidence of the identity of the aircraft we seek, is that we have a WWII map used by the patrol which has indelible pencilled writing on the lower border of the map. The writing carried the Patrol “A1” identifier, tying the details of SITREPS (Situation Reports) to the actual patrol carried out. The writing also carries a reference “Ref: 600 H/P S3H1 C/N1055, 24/5/45”
The date in the reference was when the men of “D” Company 11th Battalion AIF, were waiting for a barge to take them up to the Unamitki River, where Japanese Troops had been reported. It is nearly five weeks after Patrol A1 was completed. An Officer from 13 Brigade HQ told the men that the U.S. Army had replied to their report of the find of a Pratt & Whitney engine in the jungle and he said, “The U.S. Army (which included the Army Air Force) have told us that the engine you saw is not one of theirs. It is a Wasp engine and they say it could possibly be from a Lockheed as Lockheed are big users of Pratt & Whitney engines.”
My attention was rivetted to the 600 H/P S3H1 C/N 1055.
A 600 Horsepower engine in WWII would be considered a “low power” engine. Most of the some 2000 U.S. Army aircraft (at one time) that were based in New Guinea during WWII were powered by engines which were anywhere in the 1200 to 2000 Horsepower or over range in power and it would be unusual for a 600 H.P. engine to be within 40 miles of Rabaul during WWII.
The rarity of S3H1 being mentioned on the map, as a "Civil" engine or "Commercial" engine as against an AN-1 "Military" engine demonstrates that this engine should not be there because there were no S3H1's in the region of New Guinea before or during WWII except for Earhart’s engines and she was supposedly lost in the Pacific. If the map had “600 H/P AN-1 C/N 1055”, I would be "interested " but not so certain that it is hers, that’s the point.
The C/N1055 is definitely the Construction Number of Earhart’s aircraft, without any doubt. Her Model 10E was the 55th Model 10 built, hence “1055”.
If we even forgot that the writing includes the “C/N1055”, the very fact of a "rare" S3H1 being there and found in WWII is very strange for a Civilian engine lost there would have come from a missing Civilian aircraft and there were no Civilian aircraft powered by two S3H1’s in New Guinea before or during WWII other than Earhart’s Electra model 10E.
The U.S. Army took a look at what they had and said, "Not one of ours" points to them seeing "S3H1" and recognising it as a Pratt & Whitney “Civil” engine. For if the U.S. Army had really thought about that there might very well have been a light bulb moment…. "Hey, hang on a minute there... wait a minute..." But... there was a war going on and it got overlooked.
David Billings
www.earhartsearchpng.com