Pacific Wrecks Forum

Hi everybody.

My name is Vladimir. I am a catholic priest from Poland, working in remote Goilala Mountains, Owen Stanley Range, Papua New Guinea.

During a recent pastoral patrol in Chirime Valley, I located a possible crash site, and even recovered some piece of the aircraft.
People of village Soinda are saying that an american plane (fighter) crashed a little above the village, in the creek Hotu.
No dates and reliable details, but the kids from the village are bringing home many pieces of the aircraft.
People say, that the pilot survived, walked up the Chirime Valley, to Kafano, then was rescued by some american patrol from Yongai.

More, people say that there is another crash site further up the mountain.

Do you have any information on such crash?
I can provide pictures of the piece I took with me. It is a piece of engine... looks like exhaust...

My e-mail:
cmwoitape@gmail.com
phone:
+675 710 98 950
Papua New Guinea

There was the crash of a P-47, possibly in the area of Goilala N.G as that is mentioned as in the search area.

MACR 8082 for P-47 42-26681, flown by Philip Henry Vinall. Vinall was killed in the crash which occurred on 6 August 44. At some point his body was recovered. He is now buried in the Manila American Cemetery.

The plane went missing on a cross country flight. I will send the 8 page MACR to your gmail address. The MACR contains the serial numbers of the engine (42-125101) but unfortunately the serial numbers of the guns were not recorded.

I received an e-mail from Vladimir. He does not think the above crash is the correct one. He sent a map showing the location of the area where the wreck occurred. It is a circle of radius 3 km, centered at -8.637,147.623 (as located on Google Maps).
The pictures of the exhaust pipes look to me something like those from a P-40 or a P-39. They seem to be in pairs (2 exhaust pipes paired together as a unit). I think an Allison engine had two exhaust ports per cylinder but that was probably not unique to Allison. Perhaps some experts can comment on that. I will try to post a picture.

Photo of exhaust pipes.

After a little more research, I think this style of exhaust ("12" pipes on each side) was used on the P-39F and on the P-400 (a version of the P-39). These may be the only Allison powered planes to use this style as all photos I can find of P-40s use a "six" exhaust system.

The Allison engine was a V-12 (various versions of the V-1710). It had 6 cylinders on each side of the engine and each cylinder had 2 exhaust ports. The most common style of exhaust pipe carried the two exhaust ports on each cylinder to a single pipe, so you would see six pipe openings down each side of the engine. The P-39F and P-400 kept each cylinder port separate, so you would see 12 pipe openings on each side of the engine.

Other versions of the P-39 also had the "six" style. While the P-38 used Allison engines, they were turbo charged, so the exhaust went to a tubocharger located behind the engine. So we are "most likely" looking for a P-39F or P-400 which apparently crashed when Americans were in the area (assuming the rescue story is true). That might narrow the possibilities and time frame a little.