Kimbe Bay's Zero Wreck

The Zero wreck sits serenely in its final resting place in Kimbe Bay, Papua New Guinea


Text & Photo by Don Silcock

As the story is told around the bar at Walindi, the day the wreck of the Zero fighter was found was soon after a small plane had crashed on take-off from Hoskins Airport at Kimbe Bay. So, when local villager, William Nui, saw the wreck lay- ing on the sandy sea floor,
he thought he had found the wreckage of the recent crash— not that of a WWII Japanese fighter plane that had remain undisturbed for nearly 60 years!

That the wreck was actually spotted in the first place is an interesting story in itself, because William was freediving for sea cucumbers at the time and noticed what seemed to be a large shadow on the sea bed.

Like many people in Papua New Guinea (PNG), William is very supersti- tious and thought that he was looking at a ghost lying face up with its arms out- stretched, soaking up the sun. Terrifiedhe shot to the surface and to the rela- tive safety of his canoe, eventually sum- moning up enough courage to go back down to take a closer look, realizing that it was actually the wreck of a plane rath- er than some demon of the deep.

William took his story to the local authorities, and word of the discovery made it to Max Benjamin, the owner of Walindi Plantation Dive Resort, who was rather dubious but felt that the story should be checked out, and the rest, as they say, is history…

A legendary aircraft

Front of Zero wreck

The Mitsubishi Zero fighter was to the Japanese military during WWII what the Spitfire, or Hurricane, was to the British, or the Grumman F4 Wildcats and F6 Hellcats were to the United States, a remarkable fighting machine.

A fully restored Mitsubishi Zero in flight

It achieved legendary status initially because of its role during the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941. At that time, the United States had nothing that could out- fight it because of the Zero’s exceptional speed and manoeuvrability. But it was the Zero’s eventual role as the transport of choice for the infamous Kamikaze (Divine Wind) suicide pilots that ingrained it into the psyche of a generation.

The location of the Zero Wreck in Kimbe Bay

More than 3,000 volunteer pilots, some as young as 17, gave their lives in what they believed were divine missions to protect Japan. It was a devastating and demoralizing strategy, but one that even- tually failed due to the rapidly declining manufacturing capability of Japan com- pared to the overwhelming capacity developed by the United States.

Kamikaze Zero about to crash into an Allied vessel 

Initially, the Kamikaze attacks were on an ad-hoc basis when Japanese planes were hit and then deliberately crashed into Allied ships in a final attempt by the pilot to inflict as much damage as possible. But in October 1944, the Japanese Naval Air Force deployed specially modified Zeros from Air Group 201 in the Philippines in the Battle of Leyte. Before the war ended, a total of 49 Allied ships had been sunk by Kamikaze attacks.

History

When Max Benjamin first dived the Zero, he found it in quite remarkable condition, especially since it had been underwater for almost 60 years at that point in time. There were no signs of bullet holes or other combat damage that would have indicated the plane having been shot down, rather the ‘off’ position of the throttle lever and the pitch con- trol set to reduce air speed clearly pointed to a control- led landing in the sea.

Koreans drafted into service as Komikaze suicide pilots

The probability being that the pilot had got lost and ran out of fuel—a relatively common occurrence as WWII progressed—a fact confirmed by Japanese records showing that in 1942 only ten Zero pilots had been shot down in air combat, while 16 had disappeared due to "unknown causes".

Max and his wife, Cecilie, are both very knowledgeable about the his- tory of WWII in PNG and were fas- cinated by the newly found wreck in their backyard. So, they tried to piece together the history of the plane using a combination of fac- tual Japanese military war time records and anecdotal stories from local villagers.

The aircraft’s serial number and date were still visible on the wreck, and military records showed that the plane went missing during the battle of Cape Gloucester on West New Britain on 26 December 1944. The pilot on that day was Tomiharu Honda, but his fate remains a mystery, although a local story suggests that the native people helped get him to the nearby village of Talasea. What happened after that remains a mystery.

Front-end of Zero Wreck

Given the sacrifices made by the Kamikaze Zero pilots and the way the Japanese military venerated them, losing a plane due to navigational errors would have been a very significant loss of honour, and one theory is that the pilot could not face this and spent the rest of his life in the jungles of New Britain. An alternative, but slightly more gruesome theory is that he ended up as the main course of a ceremonial feast for a head hunting tribe—a practice still common in those days.

Either way, while Tomiharu Honda’s navigation skills may not have been perfect, there is no doubt that he could certainly fly the Zero well and performed a flawless ditching, which inflicted virtually no damage to the plane and brought it to rest just 50m from the shoreline. As divers, we can be thankful for those skills because the Kimbe Bay Zero wreck is a superb example of the genre.

Diving

The Zero wreck is located off the northern end of the Willaumez Peninsular— which affords much of Kimbe Bay its protection from the elements—in a small bay close to the popular South Emma’s dive site. Laying in just 17m of water, the wreck is easily dived, and bottom time is not a big issue, although its location close to the shore means that it is best dived when there have been several days of no rain, as run-off can make the visibility fairly limited.

Side view of the Zero Wreck

The plane sits serenely on the sandy bottom and is covered with a light marine growth with numerous small barnacle-like hard coral growth on the wings and fuselage. The three blades of the single propeller are still very much intact and have a rich covering of sponges and some colourful coral. The fish life is concentrated around the open cockpit, which hosts a large anemone and a small colony of nemos just behind the pilot’s seat.

The total length of the fuselage is just less than 10m, and the tip to tip wing- span is 12m. So, it’s not a particularly big wreck.

The Zero is dived regularly by Walindi’s day boats and the resort’s liveaboard, Febrina, also visits the wreck form time to time.

Photography

If you are only going to dive the Zero wreck once, make it a fish-eye lens day, and if you don’t have one, take your widest lens. The day I dived the wreck was four days after the last rain, so the water was quite clear. The very nice American divers with whom I shared the boat that day kindly let me have 15 min- utes on the site by myself before they entered the water. While other divers add a sense of scale to the wreck and an additional touch of drama, they are also highly likely to kick up the soft sand around the wreck as they explore it, and you can quickly see your National Geographic cover shot disappearing in the resulting gloom.

Good buoyancy control and no finning is the order of the day if you do get in

first and head for the front of the plane near the propeller, get low (carefully) and fill the frame. I shot at ISO 500 on my D700 to allow me to use a small f stop for good depth of field with a reasonable shutter speed. ■

For more information, contact Don Silcock at:  www.indopacificimages.com