Hey all,
Headed off to Raja Ampat in May, (thanks for the advice in my other thread, btw!) and I have a few weeks to kill before I have to return home.
Ive been turning over a few ideas for the remaining time, Komodo, Manado, Bali, maybe Ambon....
But what I'd REALLY like to do is dive on a few WWII wrecks while I'm there. Is there anywhere you might recommend?
(I have been a HUGE Pacific war aviation buff for a number of years... so aircraft wrecks would be a bonus!)
Hello OD, Ambon has a very large Dutch freighter in the harbor that was scuttled at the start of WW2. Very nice wreck, tons of fish and soft coral, big cargo holds which are easy to penetrate, but viz is so so.
There is also supposed to be a B17 wreck somewhere on the backside of island 1 and 2 of the 3 islands right off the SW coast of Ambon. Nobody has found it yet, possibly in too deep water, I got blown out into blue water looking for it.
IIRC, there is also a large WW2 wreck in Pulau Weh.
My guess is that the largest concentration of WW2 ship wrecks are in Balikpapan SE of Borneo where a major battle was fought by the Japanese and American navies over the oil fields. All those wrecks are in recreational depths, IIRC, but are easiest to dive by liveaboard. There maybe more aircraft wrecks in the Papua/Raja Empats/Biak areas of Eastern Indo as there was a long bombing campaign against the Japanese land and air forces in that region.
There are also supposed to be quite a few WW2 wrecks SE Sulawesi, near Bira and there are apparently some dive ops in Bira, though few reports in English about them.
Best aircraft wrecks I've seen were in PNG, where I've dived on an intact B-17 near Tufi with ammo belts still in the .50 cal machine guns, a B-25 in Madang harbor in very good shape, a Zero near Walindi on New Britain, and a P-38 in excellent shape near Finnschlafen. None were salvaged and had all guns intact. There are aircraft wrecks all over PNG, with the most being in the North. There are also many wrecks on land as well. I saw 2 Japanese Betty bombers still parked in the overgrown, bomb cratered aerodrome in Madang and a B-24 that crash landed in a farmer's field in New Britain. It had a short barrel 105 Howitzer mounted in the nose, something they only had in the Pacific theater for all the naval targets. Turning bombers like those into flying gun platforms was apparently more effective in destroying naval targets. Happy trails, -Andy
