Wreckage of bomber a grim sight

By Sager Ahmad

Reprinted from The New Straits Times
2 February 1996

 

NST Journalist Sager Ahmad trekked down a Japanese bomber which went down in the Pahang jungle in World War II, 54 years ago. The following is his account.

 

THE search for the wreckage of a Japanese World War II bomber deep in the jungles of Pahang was a tough undertaking. What I originally thought was an easy task turned out to be difficult as I made my way to the wreckage. I had been alerted to it by an article in the New Straits Times on Oct 26 last year. It was located in the middle of a swamp about 30km from Gambang, about 20km south of Kuantan. It took me four days to find a guide to the location but I finally found four after seeking help from the Gambang police station and the Batu 14 Orang Asli village. They were Wong King, 55, a farmer and his two children - Wong Man Long,15, and Wong Man Tong, 17. Then there was Khairol Anwar Kinmoon from the Orang Asli settlement. It took us a total of almost three hours to locate the wreckage - a half-hour ride in Wong's white Toyota Corolla through driving rain along a dirt road and logging tracks and rest of the way on foot.

But this was nothing compared with the chest-deep swamp which stood between us and the wreckage. We found it in a belly up position with its left wing missing while the right wing was inclined about 50 degrees from the fuselage. There were several holes which might have been caused by machine gun bullets in aerial combat. Part of the wreckage was submerged. There was no sign of any melted parts, meaning there was no fire when the aircraft crashed. Of course, this was based purely on my elementary observation. The fact that the wreckage was located in one place suggested that that there was no explosion as well. The body itself was buried in shallow mud, probably through time and not from the impact of the crash. The other parts of the aircraft was aboveground including its engine, propeller and pieces of its tail and fuselage.

Found intact with the fuselage was one of its landing gears, a bulky metal piece. But the wheels were missing. A piece of metal believed to be the tail was found in its position, emblazoned with the unmistakable red sun that was painted on all Japanese bombers. The wreckage was covered by creepers, roots and clumps of mengkuang bush. We started to grope with our bare hands under the fuselage and found what we believed to be the cockpit, under about half a metre of water. We removed objects that looked like palm sized vacuum bulbs believed to be used in the aircraft's radio and pieces of rusty metal. We had the fright of our lives twice when we thought we had found bombs- one the size of a large jack fruit and the other thinner but longer! After taking a deep breath and feeling with my hand along the cylinder, it turned out to be a gas tank.

But what gave us a real fright and joy at the same time was the discovery of the machine gun. It was very heavy - easily weighing about 10kg, all rusty but still retaining its elegant shape and immediately put an element of mystery and fear into the group. Consulting the New Illustrated Encyclopedia of Firearms by Ian V. Hogg, the machine gun resembled a Lewis 7.07mm (.303 inch), used on aircraft and tanks. It had a spade grip and a 97-round drum shaped magazine fed from the top. The gun had withstood the 54-year test in the mud well. Although it was heavily rusted, it still retained its original form. Only its magazine, made from lighter metal, showed signs of corrosion. We tried to locate the dog-tags of the crew which carry their names, service numbers, blood groups and religion but were not successful. That was the closest we managed to get to the pilot and the gunner.

The Japanese Imperial Army might have been too busy to even locate the aircraft as their priority was to conquer Malaya (as it was then known). The most probable cause of the crash, judging from the bullet holes on the wing was an aerial combat and a fierce battle did actually take place in the South China Sea about 100km east of Kuantan on Dec 10, 1941.

Veteran journalist H. Hashim Hassan wrote in an article in the New Straits Times in December 1991, describing how the "unsinkable" battleship, HMS Prince of Wales and the "indestructible" battle cruiser HMS Repulse were sunk by 85 Japanese aircraft. In the attack, Hashim said 34 high-level bombers and 51 torpedo-bombers from Japanese aircraft carriers attacked the ships causing a loss of 840 officers and men along with the battleship's skipper, Admiral Tom Philips. Support fighters from Singapore could have shot one or two Japanese bombers on that day while the battle ships could have shot one or two as well. The battle lasted about three hours in clear weather on Dec 10, This seemed to tally with the account given by Wong King, our guide. He recalled that the people in Gambang saw a British aircraft shooting down two Japanese planes during the early part of the war. "One fell near Batu Sembilan, near the airport and was recovered while the other fell in the jungle and was never found ... this must be the wreckage of that other aircraft," he said. A group of loggers came across the wreckage in the swamp in August last year.