the JOHN HARDING

click to enlarge picture

It was a thrill flying in this seaplane to one of the most beautiful and remote, inhabited islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Last year news footage from Florida showed a wing breaking off a similar Grummond Albatross Hu-16 aircraft, while in flight. No survivors.

click picture to enlarge

click to enlarge

Kapingamarangi Atoll as we saw the atoll from a Hu-16 seaplane

Situated within the Federated States of Micronesia is this beautiful coral atoll. Depth in the lagoon about 200 meters! Depth outside the reef measured in thousands of meters. The bottom shelves away as would the sides of an extinct volcano, which is what atolls are thought to be.

Living coral on the surface prevents the whole lot disappearing into the depths as it all slowly sinks. At least that is the theory proposed by Charles Darwin that is still being taught.

How that fits with global warming today would be another guess.

Could it also be that our sun is becoming hotter in addition to these terrible man-made things occurring simultaneously?

click to enlarge picture

Copyright: John Harding 1969

Amongst the WW2 aircraft wreckage in the lagoon at Kapinga is this exploded bomb.

Questions: Was it from one of the RAAF Hudson bombers based at Rabaul who attacked the Japanese weather station in December 1941 and January 1942?

Could the surrounding underwater aircraft wreckage be that of a lost RAAF bomber?

This Japanese mandate island was, in late 1941, the nearest Japan held territory to Australia.

Eye witnesses saw anti-aircraft fire explode a bomb being dropped – which subsequently destroyed the attacking aircraft killing the entire crew.

Author David Vincent says:

Thank you very much for contacting me as I’m very interested in RAAF Hudson operations and all (or most of) my research is going in to a two volume coverage of the subject.

Book One has been out for a few years and at present I’m trying to complete Book Two but of the four main chapters that dealing with ‘Operations North Eastern Area’ (covering essentially the New Britain/New Guinea ops) is the one I’m trying to complete at present.

I can therefore tell you with certainty that no Hudsons were lost in the raids on Kap, so if the story is true about the bomb then it wasn’t a Hudson that dropped it.

I have quite a lot of info on the Kap raids by Hudsons but nothing about what happened later. I feel that, by then, if anyone was still attacking the place it must have been the Yanks.

djvincent@chariot.com.au

Made from a breadfruit tree without any metal fastenings – an amazing vessel built with skills rapidly becoming lost, (maybe).