From the main road around the western side of Wellington Harbour can still be seen the location of what must be the capital city’s best-known wartime aircraft crash.
Well-known because up until a few years ago the crash site on the hills behind the dormitory town of Wainuiomata was “discovered” with monotonous regularity by hunters and trampers who stumbled upon it.
The large scar on the hillside and the wreckage belong to an RNZAF P-40E Kittyhawk assigned which crashed on the western side of the Orongorongo hills on May 1, 1943.
The aircraft belonged to No 16 Squadron at the base at Ohakea, the satellite airfield of Woodbourne, and was taking part in a routine exercise with the Observer Corps.
The official investigation which followed the crash showed the aircraft had been caught in a downdraft on the lee side of the hill and was unable to gain sufficient height to clear the tops. It would have needed only about another 100 ft to get over safely.
The Kittyhawk hit a rock face and exploded and caught fire. Wreckage was scattered over a half mile area and the engine broke away and rolled down a gully.
The pilot, a young sergeant who had his wings only eight months before, was killed instantly. His body was not recovered until two days after the crash by a party of police and airmen. The aircraft was fully-armed and loaded at the time of the crash, and much of the ammunition was scattered and buried by the blast.
However, over the past thirty years, much of this has been uncovered by the weather. It was reported that in 1958 an apple box full of ammunition was handed into the Police. In January 1966 a group of schoolboys salvaged two 5 in machine guns and a quantity of ammunition from the wreck and hauled them home. They were later confiscated by customs.
The following month, the RNZAF’s former Director of Works, Wg Cmdr J. M. Carr, tramped into the site and recovered more ammunition that had been uncovered by the rain.
The weather and the hundreds of young hands that have visited the wreck during the past thirty years have had their effect on the remains of the Kittyhawk, and today there is little left to see.
Most of the wreckage at the crash site has been buried by slips, and much else, including the engine and propeller, have rolled a considerable distance down the gully from the crash site.
A remarkable feature about the location, though, is that in the comparatively new regenerating forest how the bush has never regenerated over the actual place where the Kittyhawk hit.
It would appear the aircraft pancaked into the ground, and there is a distinct line around the area of the explosion and fire where the bush has stopped and never grown again.
The scar on the hill is quite considerable and as mentioned earlier, can be seen with the naked eye from the other side of Wellington Harbour.
