Students Find Warplane in Darwin Harbour
by Nigel Adlam September 9, 2004

A GROUP of schoolchildren found the wreckage of a warplane at the bottom of Darwin Harbour yesterday. They dived 30m to the Corinthian, a four-propeller flying boat, which crashed in 1942. Visibility was poor, but the nine Darwin High School students could make out the forward hull of the fuselage. Teacher Steve Goodwin said: "It was heavily encrusted with coral." The students were taken to the site by Coral Divers. The wreckage is two nautical miles from Doctors Gully.

"We came up from the dive and were really excited," 16-year-old Helen Dwyer said. "There could be people in there, but there were no ghosts down there." The Corinthian was carrying weapons from Karumba in Queensland when it crash-landed and sank.

Coral Divers boss Sasha Muller said the plane's heavy load may have moved forward, causing the flying boat to sink on hitting the water. Two US servicemen died. The pilot is believed to have escaped. The wreckage of the Corinthian was later blown up by the military to ensure it did not become a shipping hazard - and then forgotten. It is not on any charts. "The students did well," Mr Goodwin said. The students were Helen Dwyer, Lewis Marshall, 15, Carolina Barua, 16, Edward Dostine, 14, Anokai Lancaster, 16, Mitchell Mappas, 16, Ines Setiawan, 16, and Mia Tranthem, 16.