I see that Craig has finally made the news with his project. It's in the SCMP.
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1240852/finding-us-plane-wre…
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1240922/site-crashed-us-warp…
Congrats to Craig for a job well done.
Thanks very much Phil,
Sadly the project is on hold now for the summer, far too hot and uncomfortble trying to get up there.
One of the last times I was up there my dog was a whisker away from being tagged by a cobra, if I hadn't grabbed her by the scruff and chucked her down the hill, so best to wait until winter.
Yes, congratulations Craig, you've done a great job of combining the on-the-ground exploring with all the research to work out what it all meant.
"It is quite an amazing story, but hopefully as my search continues there's much more to be told yet."
Looking forward to it!
Cheers, David
PS There are a couple of other descriptions of that day's events at: http://gwulo.com/70-years-ago?date_filter[value][year]=1945&date_filter[value][month]=1&date_filter[value][day]=16
Fascinating story Craig. I had come across your comments on Gwulo many times, but never worked out the plane crash was what you were working on. Hopefully you can tell us more.
As for getting round the paywall, I had been paying for an online subscription to SCMP for over a decade, and now Phil tells me I could have saved all the money! Well at least I can use the archive search function to look for possible articles of interest to Gwulo, even though it is one of the worst of its kind I have ever used.
breskvar
Hi David
Its good to see that Craig has finaly got news of the planes discovery out into the public arena.He has certainly put in the hard yards both on the ground & in research.I am sending photos taken at the second crash site in February to your email & you may like to post them in this section
Regards
Gary Liddell
Thanks for your kind words.
I have a photo album of the main crash site, if anyone would like to see some of the other pieces? The items that we removed (after loging GPS's and photographing) from the area was only to help idetify which aircraft it was, before we found the actual impact site. Once we positvily identfied it as TBM-Avenger, we have left everything else in situ.
https://picasaweb.google.com/117446805048534164623/TBMAvenger
PS: I would also like to add, there are a couple of other guys in the team that are working on the project, which didn't get a mention. Philip Crancknell (who also contributes on gwulo, and thats how we met) and Martin Dewick. It isn't just me. We always head out together for saftey (and a bit of light banter).
The Police EOD team came the following day and removed the empty 2,000lb bomb casing with the aid of a Government flying service helicopter.
It is currently in the EOD depot, where they are treating it to prevent further rusting, whereupon they will put it on display in one of the museums.
It is the largest one found in Hong Kong, the biggest before this was 500lb.
It helped confirm that it was indeed the crash site of the second plane in the collision that we had been looking for.
It is a bit of mystery as to who actually removed the nose and base fuze and then took out the TNT, as they obviously knew what they were doing. I very much doubt the Japanese occupying forces would have taking the time or the risk dealing with it in that manner, far more likely that they would have put a timed explosive under it and legged it!
Hi Phil,
Very good possibility. And one of a couple of possible explanations we have been throwing around. But neither of which are water tight and just theories.
1) As you mention, Guerillas may have removed the TNT to make their own "IED's" to fight the Japanese. I don't know how active they were in the South Side of the island, I'm no expert in this area so I can't really comment.
2) Local fishermen may have used the TNT to make their own explosives to stun fish. A very destructive practice and thankfully banned nowadays.
The EOD guys said it did not look like a professional job, so we are discounting the British Army (if they did it sometime after the war and before the Police undertook the role- again they would have just blown it up in situ). So It appears the TNT was removed for a use for something, rather than to just make the bomb safe.
We did also find a small iron mallet head right next to the casing and a few pieces of a China rice bowl. But as the bulk of the plane has been scavenged at this site, the items would most likely have been used by locals breaking up the plane to remove for scrape or for their own purposes.
Hopefully we'll see it on display soon.
Congratulations Craig, that's a fantastic piece of HK history you've discovered.
The cinematograher Edwin Lee has uploaded your video to Vimeo here:
Which means, using Firefox, you can download a nice hi-res version for yourself.
Cheers
HillWalker
Hello chaps
guerrillas operating in HK between 1942 & 1945 were known as the Hong Kong &Kowloon independant brigade(aka the East River column) With 5000 full time soldiers it was divided into six detachments namely Sai Kung Lantau Shatau kok Yuenlong Marine & Urban Each brigades area of operation is self explainatory With regards to the urban brigade (300 strong) its members wete unarmed & were occupied in intelligence gathering with regards to japanese troop deployment location of ordnance depots movement of work gangs in airport repair & construction shipping movements all of which was passed to Allied forces via BAAG agents
I doubt very much that there were any guerrilla activities in or around Tai Tam during the war & the Tai Tam fishing theory is the most likely
regards
Gary Liddell
Guerillas
Hi Gary
Thanks for the explanation, I guess you guys know better than me. However, I am still curious about how easy these things were to defuse and disarm? What form did the explosive take? Seems to be a rather large risk to take for the sake of bombing for fish, but then I guess some people can do some crazy things. Up until very recently there was still alot of local fish bombing occurring in the NE NT and many fisherman still head out to Pedro Blanco and use explosives there (about 80km east of HK)
Phil
My uncle is Louis Gahran, who is the gunner mentioned in the article. My father, John Gahran, is his younger brother, and is very interested in getting in touch with the group investigating the crash site. He was only 12 when his brother was killed. Please let us know how we can make contact.
I am the son of Louis "Billy" Gahran's older sister. In some way I am Billy's "replacement" as I as born less than 3 months after Billy's death which followed the death of his younger brother Buddy from Scarlet Fever. I never appreciated what a very difficult time it was for my grand parents, my mother, my uncle and my dad who was shipped out on a Coast Guard Troop ship. Craig and team Thank you so very much. We are a small but spread out family and Billy is uniting us even after 70 years.
James "Jay" Fenton
son of Catherine Irene Gahran Fenton
A very interesting update on this story appeared in the SCMP Magazine on 11 Jan 2015: http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1677815/remains-us-…
The story summarises the extra information Craig has found since the earlier story, and also introduces the Project Avenger team. They are raising HK$1million to retrieve one of the crashed planes from the hillside, and display it at the Maritime Museum.
Guerrilla
Thanks for the information Gary.
I wasn't aware of any Guerrilla activity on the south side of Hk Island, but due to the Japanese presence at various positions, it does make sense that there were "operatives" keeping tabs of their movements and reporting back to either the East River Brigade and/or to BAAG.
If the TNT from the bomb casing was used by the local fishermen (my preferred theory), I wonder if they would have had the technical knowhow to defuse and disarm the bomb on their own?