The Bombers of Ballale Island

The tiny, jungle covered island of  Ballale, one of the northernmost islands in the Solomons chain, is completely uninhabited. I had been given two reasons for this; firstly, so I was told, nearby islanders believed the island to be haunted and, secondly, the island lacked a good supply of fresh water.
I had arrived on Ballale in search of the wrecks of Japanese WW 2 aircraft that I understood were to be found the jungle that covered the island. As the sound of my departing aircraft faded in the distance, I set out, with sketch map in hand, to find a Japanese bomber. The jungle, particularly along the sun-drenched edges of the rough landing field, was as dense as anything I had seen anywhere in the islands. It took me a good 15 minutes before I found what I was looking for.

Towering 15 feet off the ground, it reared up out of the green foliage like some giant prehistoric monster, its nose festooned and splotched with growths of ferns, moss and lichen. It was a Mitsubishi G4M1 'Betty' bomber, standing on its undercarriage, complete with a blazing red hinomaru or Japanese rising sun insignia clearly visible under its wing.

My book, Pacific War Ghosts, is available in paperback and on Amazon Kindle. Lavishly illustrated with over 120 photos, Pacific War Ghosts tells the story of my numerous travels to the battlefields of the South Pacific in search of war relics.