Early morn to all,
I was meaning to do this sooner but with the on going remodeling of the “dungeon”, this got pushed back. Well I am now scanning pix to my pc from my Aunts longtime boyfriend Jim who served with the 865th Engineer Aviation Battalion in New Guinea.
When my Aunt “Shorty” passed away about 10yrs ago, we began the process of going through stuff and sorting things out.
Well my Dad and I went into the basement to make sure things were squared away when we noticed a suite case in a dark corner on a shelf almost hidden from view…
Lo and behold it was Jim’s war history in a suite case… Let me tell you, our jaws dropped once we opened the case and to put it simply, like hitting the lottery but better…
Photos upon photos(also pix taken from Japanese prisioners of war, journals), his dog tags, patches from the 9th, 13th,14th &15th AF’s, documents, Japanese maps and so on…
So I like to share just a handful of pix that I was able to scan thus far…
The first three photos are of Japanese Ki43-I “Oscars” in various stages of being rebuilt. Going back to Jim before enlisting mid 43. He obtained his private pilots license around the end of 1940 and had as his log book shows, give or take 100hrs of flight time before enlisting.
So as the story goes when he joined, they had enough pilots at the time and since he was mechanically inclined as well, he went the way of construction.
Getting back to the pix, they were left behind by the retreating IJA and so the 84th Aerodrome Sqd took em into their possession along with the 865th Eng Avi Btl…
As they made them there own, Jim had many opportunities to work on them and get them back into airworthy status.
As to location, I know he was in and around Milne Bay, New Britain, Finschhafen & Hollandia
And yes, I have in the making, plans of making one or two of the photos into dios…
In regards to the above pix, the notation on the back is faded but one part is mentioned as being on “Sentimental Island”.
As with the next set of photos, I believe Hollondia was aka “Sentimental Island” but not certain… On the back side notation, it gives Hollandia as the location but also Sentimental Island is mentioned. Will do some research soon…!!
These are pix of A-20G’s with the 388thBS, 312thBG… The first shot is a group shot of a mix of A-20’s and the last one which is my ALL TIME fav, nothing but Cheese Cake at it’s best… Love the nose art on this one… On the back of this photo, it has a serial number which is really faded so it’s hard to make out and the tail code letter of “B” or “D”… Again hard to read since it has faded too but to me it looks more like a “D” as by looking at the a/c tail codes, they are smaller as viewd with the above photo
The last set of three photos are of Ki48 “Lily’s” and two are of the same ship… Location I am not to sure of… I do not have the pix near me so I will have to check them out later on today…
As to when these particular photos were taken, I feel late 44, early mid 45…
Thank you for letting me share some pix of Jims service in New Guinea…
Flaps up,
Mike
Rangers Lead The Way