Posted on 01/07/2019 2:06:39 PM PST by Snickering Hound
It has recently come to light that a number of significant Japanese aircraft wrecks are currently being disassembled for recovery in the South Pacific.
Located at the old Imperial Japanese Navy airfield on Balalae Island, part of the Shortland Island Group in the western province of the Solomon Islands, the collection of airframes and components importantly includes two Mitsubishi G4M attack bombers, along with the rear fuselage of another example.
The G4M, better known in the west by its Allied code name, Betty, was a mainstay of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s land-based aerial bombing fleet.
They possessed incredible range, although this came with the significant sacrifice of armor, self-sealing fuel tanks and structural toughness.
They served many purposes during the war, from medium altitude bomber to torpedo bomber, to transport, including their use as a launch platform for the rocket-propelled Yokosuka Ohka kamikaze planes.
Famously, it was while flying in a Mitsubishi G4M that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, architect for the attack on Pearl Harbor, lost his life when U.S. Army Air Force P-38 Lightnings intercepted and shot him down on April 18th, 1943 — coincidentally as he was on his way to Balalae.
There are currently no complete examples of the Betty in preservation in the world save for a rather fragile, belly-landed example (G4M1 Model 11 m/n 1280) recovered by Bruce Fenstermaker from Babo Airfield in Indonesia during 1991.
This Betty was on display for many years at the Planes of Fame Air Museum in Chino, California. The Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum acquired this airframe in November, 2015, and it has been out of public view since that time.
The rarity of this significant aircraft type makes the recovery of the two, far more intact G4Ms on Balalae of great importance.
According to PacificWrecks.com, these airframes are G4M1 Model 11 (m/n 2806) and G4M1 Model 11 (m/n 1800) with the rear fuselage coming from a so far unidentified early-model G4M1.
Reportedly both No.2806 and No.1800 rolled off the line at Mitsubishi’s Nagoya factory No.3 in Nagoya, Japan during May, 1943. 2806 served as tail code U-321 in the Imperial Japanese Navy with 705 Kokutai (air group). No.1800 is believed to have served with 702 Kokutai, although her tail code is so far unknown.
When WWII ended, dozens of aircraft lay abandoned on Balalae. Given the island’s remoteness, and lack of permanent human settlement, these aircraft remained, pretty much where they sat for decades until the late 1960s when warbird salvagers began surveying the aircraft for possible recovery.
Canadian, Bob Diemert was the first in 1968, when he recovered some of the smaller types; a couple of Aichi D3A2 Val dive bombers, and three Mitsubishi A6M Zeros. Others have returned over the years, with a number of Zeros being among the types recovered in a 2007 effort.
Now a decade on, the last of the major, relatively intact wrecks remaining on the island are being recovered.
The first rumors of the recovery came in April this year, and obviously stirred up quite a bit of controversy in the Solomons as many islanders are justifiably concerned about being taken advantage of – as has happened previously.
There are strict rules regarding the export of war relics from the island archipelago, but from the reporting so far, it appears that the salvagers have been working with the government and the Solomon Islands National Museum to formally negotiate the release of these airframes.
There is reportedly a Memorandum of Understanding which includes the refurbishment and return of two aircraft back to the Museum for display. Such agreements have occurred in the past, of course, but once something leaves the islands, enforcing the terms is very difficult to police….
Airframe disassembly began in August this year in the revetments where they had lain since the end of WWII. The recovery team had a pathway cut through the trees leading from the airfield down to the beach. They rigged up crudely fashioned sleds made from tree branches to haul items such as the wings, engines and fuselage sections to the shore for shipment off-island.
The forward fuselage and center wing section for one of the Betty bombers had a pair of wheels attached to the landing gear legs so that it could be wheeled along. As of mid-October, everything was sitting by the water’s edge awaiting the transport to the Solomon Islands major port at the nation’s capital city, Honiara on Guadalcanal Island.
Images of these artifacts were posted on Facebook a few days ago by Australian, Michael Holmesby; full permission was obtained for re-using them here. We thank him for that privilege. He also uploaded some video of the site at Balalae, which might prove as interesting as the still images presented earlier…
And for those who, like me, had a memory lapse on the Shiden Kai’s Allied code name it was “George.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kawanishi_N1K
From the deep recesses of my memory, I recall reading that when the Ki-84/Frank was tested using 100 octane avgas, its performance easily matched and slightly exceeded the Hellcat, Corsair, and P-51.
No, the Japanese made some terrifyinglt good aircraft.
What they could not make were reliable engines.
No. They didn’t. The gas tank in the Zero was located directly behind the pilots seat. They were made almost entirely from aluminum , they didn’t have self sealing gas tanks and their pilots didn’t use parachutes, or very rarely used them.
The late model Jap aircraft all had either CO2 systems or self sealing fuel tanks. The follow on to the Zero, the a7m, was good plane. I don’t know why that plane took so long to go into productions. The Japs did some real stupid stuff in WWII.
I just finished reading Sakai’s autobiography.
He felt that the Japanese had turned out two fighter aircraft that were equal to anything the Americans had. They just couldn’t produce large numbers of them because their factories were destroyed.
It was fascinating to read about the war from the point of view of a Japanese fighter pilot.
Read about the training program for the Japanese Navy Fighter Pilots.
It was very intense and produced great fighter pilots.
But, it didn’t produce enough of them.
They also suffered from an intense and disruptive rivalry between the Army and Navy.
Lastly, they had a culture that glorified individual combat.
They weren’t very good at teamwork.
Look at the kill ratios of American planes to the Japanese throughout the war. The Japs got creamed every time. Christ sake dude, it’s almost always “America sucks’’ with you. The simple fact of the matter about 90 per cent of what the Japs made was crap and almost 100% of their military tactics were even worse. On that I would agree. Holy Smokes, a freakin’ miracle , we’ve agreed on something.
As usual you are unable to discuss anything in a academic context which leads me to believe you are basically lacking in formal post secondary education. I am not calling you stupid but you lack a curiosity to explore detail and the hypothetical.
That is not based on fact. The Japs had many more aircraft in their arsenal than that and some of them were very good to excellent. This is what I was trying to discuss with you but you are incapable of and academic discussion about anything,
Provide data on that General. And please, lets not talk ‘’academic’’ ok? You’re the furthest from that.
First of all both the zero and the betty bomber were not good aircraft. They were terrible aircraft and obsolete by 1942. They fell apart when hit with one bust of machine gun fire. Most burned up before hitting the water.
The Japs realized this and made much better aircraft but had numerous production problems which prevented them for fielding these superior aircraft in large numbers. But they had them, especially George and Frank.
Yep.
Lost his eye in that fight.
They were extremely demoralized by the B-17 and the B-29.
The Japanese bombers were horrible.
The Japanese Navy had a real problem with calling off an attack just when they were ready to win big.
Pearl Harbor is an example, but an even bigger mistake was their pullback from the Indian Ocean.
They were deathly afraid of losing carriers, and then lost four of them at Midway.
I think another big problem for the Japanese was their lack of radar.
They lost a lot of planes on the ground because they never knew when we were coming.
Now you’re contradicting yourself.
I think their Samurai history was helpful in some ways, but very destructive in others.
They suffered horrible losses in Burma and New Guinea and Guadalcanal.
They were more concerned with not showing fear than they were with winning.
Oh hell yeah. Burma and New Guinea were awful for all the combatants but especially for the Japanese. Malaria, dysentery ravaged both the allies and the Japs. The difference was our medical corps could better handle it. We had quinine and morphine. The Japanese didn’t. We could evacuate our wounded. Theirs got a hand grenade to end their misery.
The arisaka action was tested by P.O. Ackley after the war, along with every mauser action variant, it was the only one that couldn’t be tested to failure.
Were they made rough and largely unfinished toward the end of the war, yes. None that haven’t been torch heated are unsafe. Good base for a custom rifle.
The nambu suffers from a competing sized cartridge, one should remember that size the average Japanese man was during the war for the answer to that riddle.
As for airplanes, had they had even a more competitive manufacturing ability most of Asia and the Pacific would be speaking Japanese, including all of china.
Ponder how much different Asia would have been during the 50-90s had a single country been in charge. Anyone think it would have been worse?
Over it all academically one had to be dishonest with the facts to think how it turned out was any better.
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