Submerged Ventura Off Moa Island

Attaching a logbook extract from the MV Carpentaria which records having "inspected Ventura lying in three fathoms" (on 15th November 1944).

This occurred off Gibbes Head on Banks Island (now Moa Island) in North Queensland. This doesn't appear to have been an RAAF aircraft. Any suggestions as to its identity?

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This post has been edited by bauple58 on Nov 4 2016, 09:02 AM

Hi

Seems to be based on what the Captain "thought" was a Ventura.

But went backwards through USN Losses per PV-1s and USMC PV-1(Ns) to January 1944. M = Missing,..D is Ditched

10/09/1944 PV-1 33349 VPB-148 EMIRAU SW PAC LT GEORGE S. VON WELLER S
10/20/1944 PV-1 34799 VPB-146 PITYILU SW PAC LTJG WILLIAM B. TAYLOR M
10/20/1944 PV-1 34885 VPB-146 PITYILU SW PAC LTJG GORDON L. PEEL D
10/28/1944 PV-1 48810 VPB-146 PITYILU SW PAC LT WILLIAM J. DECKER M
9/24/1944 PV-1 34879 VPB-146 ADMIRALTIES SW PAC LTJG P.E. CARON S
7/10/1944 PV-1 34884 VB-146 ADMIRALTIES SW PAC LT F.S. MASON S
6/01/1944 PV-1 34833 VB-148 EMIRAU SW PAC
5/03/1944 PV-1 34824 VB-148 MUNDA SOPAC LT W.E. DAVIS M
4/14/1944 PV-1 48697 VB-148 MUNDA KAHILI SOPAC LTJG W.T. HENDERSON S
3/13/1944 PV-1(N) 33255 VMF(N)-531RUSSELLS SOPAC MAJ R.H. GEORGE S
3/14/1944 PV-1(N) 34841 VMF(N)-531HENDERSON SOPAC LT BRINGAZE S
3/21/1944 PV-1(N) 33079 VMF(N)-531TREASURY RABAUL SOPAC LT M.M. PIERCE D
3/21/1944 PV-1(N) 29870 VMF(N)-531TREASURY RABAUL SOPAC LT W.L. BIRDSALL D
2/03/1944 PV-1 33254 VMF-215 PIVA BUKA SOPAC
2/09/1944 PV-1(N) 33253 VMF(N)-531 BARAKOMA SOPAC LT C.W. WATSON D
2/13/1944 PV-1 33285 VB-140 GUADALCANAL GUADALCANAL SOPAC
2/19/1944 PV-1(N) 33089 VMF(N)-531GREEN SOPAC LT T.H. BANKS M
2/22/1944 PV-1 33340 VB-138 STIRLINGCAPE ST. GEORGE SOPAC LTJG A.J. DITTER D
1/01/1944 PV-1 34801 VB-138 RUSSELLS RENARD SOPAC
1/29/1944 PV-1 34891 VB-138 RUSSELLS SOPAC

Nadda,..any missing RNZAF Venturas staging through,..or perhaps its a USAAF/USN C-56/R whataname Loadmaster?

May could have been the missing shot down Jap Bomber of March 1942 Horn Island Raid too??? Just a diversion comment :)

Best
Gordy

Hi Shep

Actually 2125Hrs 19th October 1944, A59-83 fits. F/O T J Branigan Serv# 408959 and crew. The CO 13 Sqn came and picked them up ex Horn Island 20/10/44 after 28 OBU Horn Island saw one of them waving a Flag before picking them up prior in Crash Boat.

Position given as 3 miles north east of West Island( Bearing in mind name changes in the 50/60's)

Position: 10.25South, 142.12East in 22 foot of water.
Pilot: 408959 F/O Thomas Joseph Branigan
Crew:F/O JA Wagner
412177 F/Lt Keith George Oglesby
409133 F/Sgt Kevin Daniel Cody
407365 W/O Philip George Joseph
72058 LAC Ormonde Nicholas Morris

The Non Australian thing threw me.

Gordy

Thanks everyone for helping to shed some light on this matter. Quite by chance I've found another corroborating published reference, one which highlights the best understood shortcoming of oral history (viz. memory):

JM: Yeah, people were there at Wag. In World
War II, people were there. At the same time
that wolfram started,16 everybody worked
at Gunagan and on Ith [Hill]. People from
St Paul’s – there were no trucks, so people
walked from there. And people from Poid
walked from there to work wolfram here
at Gunagan. Wag was there before the war
started. And when World War II began,
boys from Wag and from Poid went to the
army. We’ve been here at Kubin since that
war, 1945. We been here at the same time
that plane crash. American bomber.17
BD: American bomber crashed here on Mua?
JM: Yeah, we saw it. It crashed because something
happened. Maybe fuel shortage. It was heading
here, saw the light.
BD: Did you see it?
JM: It was night-time. The mothers saying,
‘Just keep still. No lights!’; lights were off
everywhere. And there was someone inside,
where that spring at Balbup is. Someone been
there at the spring when that plane crashed.
At the time, we were schooling here. And
those boys who been in church they all
survive; there were six to eight people in
the plane. Wa. While civilian man go down
to meet them, night-time. They got out of
the plane in rubber dinghy and someone
found parachute floating afterwards. Wa.
BD: And they came here, to Kubin?
JM: Wa, they land on beach there at corner,
at Buabun Kupai; that’s the name of that
corner, with mangroves, along mangrove.
Where those coconuts are.
BD: Arkai?

(17) In late 1945 or early 1946 an air force plane circled around
Kubin in the late afternoon. After circling a few times it
headed off towards Thursday Island. However, it quickly
began to run out of fuel, returned and circled for some
time. The pilot was unable to land on the beach but
eventually landed smoothly in the water at Tepai, just
east of Kubin. Some men from the village went out in
a dinghy to help but, by the time they got there, the
airmen had inflated a raft and managed to reach the
shore. The plane sank in the shallow water on the edge
of the reef at Tepai. The six men on the plane spent the
night on shore before coming up to the village the next
day. The next morning the people found parachutes and
many other things washed up on the beach. That same
day Napota Savage and his younger brother Poey went
out to the plane. Napota dived on the plane wreck and,
as he surfaced, an army barge from Thursday Island came
round the headland to pick up the plane crew. Napota and
Poey hid in the mangroves until the army had gone.
The army took the bombs, guns and other things from
the plane and warned the villagers not to go near the
wreck. In the late 1950s Wees Nawia, Napota Savage
and other men from Kubin raised one of the propellers
by using empty 200 litre petrol drums and floated it back
to Kubin. It was placed near the old council shed but in
the 1980s was mounted on a cement base opposite the
store. At low tide parts of the plane can still be seen and
it is still used as a fishing spot (Edwards & Edwards,
1979:14; St George, c.1965: 66; Teske, 1991: 18-19).

The reference citation is: Manas, John; David, Bruno; Manas, Louise; Ash, Jennifer and Shnukal, Anna. An interview with Fr John Manas [online]. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Culture, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2008: 261-294. Cultural Heritage Series. Availability: <http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=050783088883605;res=IELHSS> ISSN: 1440-4788. [cited 04 Nov 16].[I]

Mark