Patair DC3 VH-PNB
Apinun all. Some further recollections of VH-PNB incident, as passed to myself by Madang based staff. Mostly already covered I think.
VH-PNB suffered a complete hydraulic failure, on that fateful day, on a trip into the hills and rather than try to stop the aircraft on a short highland airstrip with no brakes it was considered the best thing to do was return to Madang and land on the longer runway. The only problem was that as the aircraft was fully loaded with freight for the highlands it was pretty heavy and therefore required more runway than Madang had to allow the aircraft to stop. The aircraft drifted off the end of the runway and into the soft swampy area by the harbour and due to its weight and the boggy ground sank up to its belly in the mud. The ground engineer Vern Green went to organise a crane to lift the aircraft out of the mud but was told to do nothing because of the insurance and so the perfectly serviceable aircraft sat in the mud and, guess what, the tide came in, as it does, and swamped the aircraft thus completely buggering it and the engines, props, and everything. Great insurance deal wasn't it.
The Captain was Geoff Bennett and I can't remember who the F/O was. (Not Kerry Huston).
Vern Green was the duty engineer at Madang on the day, and he immediately arranged for a crane to lift the aircraft out of the mud, as it had only just entered the mud flats that only went under at high tide. He was advised by Ansett that the insurance company would not allow the aircraft to be moved until it could be assessed, so all he could do is watch the tide slowly come in and ruin a perfectly good aircraft. Cheers.