The expat divers from Moresby arrive on the afternoon flight. I’ve been made aware of their reputation, but when we meet for drinks at the bar they’re not scary at all. A relief, because my whole trip to PNG has been built around the dive on ‘Black Jack’. The resort offers it as a charter, but needs a minimum of six divers. Travelling as Billy-No-Mates I’d miss out, so Tufi arranged for me to tag onto the group.

If you’re considering a wreck dive trip to PNG, it’s fundamental to nail details like this in place before parting with your cash.

Consider not only the additional cost of the wreck dive, because the chances are there will be an additional cost, (warranted or not), but also the possibility that a minimum number of divers may be required, (as in this case), and where those additional bodies are going to come from. Of the five locations I dived in PNG, I was the only diver at three of them.

Consider too the limited season when your wreck of choice is accessible. Don’t just turn up and expect it to happen. Don’t trust tour operators who don’t care if you’ve come from the other side of the world, (it’s not their holiday, they’ve got your money, you won’t get it back), and don’t trust resort web sites, even Tufi’s, which is still rather vague with regards to some of it’s wreck diving options.

So email well in advance direct to the dive operator and ask how much, what time of year, and how many divers they need make it happen. You can ask about Nitrox, but you’ll be diving on air. And it’s invariably the last fifty miles from the dive shop to the wreck that is the problem, not the X thousand miles getting to the shop from Pratts Bottom, Lucky Slap, or Birmingham.

Let’s face it, the diving industry in PNG doesn’t get out much. They’re not dreaming of diving the wrecks in Scapa or the Red Sea, (or Stoney Cove for that matter), in the way we dream of diving theirs. Consequently the operators haven’t considered UK divers as a viable market, so haven’t had the foresight to ask the intrepid few why they’re flying over other, closer, world class locations, to come and dive with them.

In short they’ll give you diving, but it might not necessarily be the diving you’ve set your heart on. To avoid any frustration, plan, plan, and plan some more. Naturally fastidious, overzealous, frankly obsessional planning will inevitably turn you into a Dive-Trip-Nazi-From-Hell, but it does mean that six months down the line you’ll get that magical five am wake up call to go and dive the Black Jack. Like I wasn’t awake already.

Christmas 1986 Rod Pearce, David Pennefather and Bruce Johnson went looking for a large aircraft villagers said had crashed and sunk off Cape Vogel. The three fanned out as they dived over the reef, and Rod, diving on the right, pushed by the current, came through a field of sea whips around 40 meters, and saw “a shape that didn’t fit.” He came upon the huge tail, the fabric over the rudder rotted away. The nose had hit the white coral sand bottom first, and crumpled under impact, but otherwise Black Jack had landed intact on the seabed at 48 meters. Even the guns in the turret behind the tail still moved in their mountings.

And now I’m finning hard down towards her, and she is the most magnificent sight. I am in awe. The tail standing nearly 7 meters high, dwarfing Glen, who watches us descend. The plane is just over 20 meters in length, the wingspan over 30 meters, and as I traverse the top gun turret I can see wing tip to wing tip. The glass is missing from the side window of the cockpit and it’s incredible to think De Loach squeezed through that tiny space to make his escape. The wreck is covered in light coral and sponge, beautiful when illuminated by the strobes, although the nose art is now lost.

I skirt across to the starboard side to the cause of the crash, the failure of the starboard engines. The propellor of number one engine is bent significantly more than the blades of number two, indicating the disparity in performance on impact.

Divers will debate the best shipwreck long into the night, using all manner of spurious arguments. Black Jack will just sit there and be fabulous. It’s the best plane wreck in the world bar none. This is Elvis, no question, but sadly my gauge says that I have to leave the building. Right now.

I confess, I lingered, which is why the hang tank secured on the reef exit line is a necessity. The Moresby divers brought Nitrox ponies with them. It’s their second dive on Black Jack this year, and I can detect from the thin stream of bubbles escaping through holes in the top of the fuselage, that they’re still trying to work out how to get into the cockpit.

If they’d watched ‘Black Jack’s Last Mission’, the 1988 documentary by Steve Birdsall, on the plane’s history, and De Loach’s subsequent return to Boga Boga, they’d know that Bruce Johnson managed to squeeze past the bomb racks by removing his BC, and following that through, making him the first person to sit at the controls for over forty years.

Even as I ascend and can still just see the fading outline of the giant warbird below me, I want to go and dive her again, yet know I never will. I’ve had my audience with The King.

Post Script

A couple of weeks after I returned home I received an email from Justin Taylan, the founder of the Pacific Wreck database, who charts the stories of the US air vets, those missing in action, and the craft they flew.

"On Sunday I drove to Forked River, New Jersey, to see George Prezioso, the radio operator of Black Jack, who’s birthday was on May 24th, for a party with his family and friends.

As you can imagine, there was a big spread of food, Italian favourites and other good eating and drinking, and although I’d interviewed him previously, I enjoyed him reminiscing about his pet koala bear, and his one love, an Australian nurse named Lorna, who died later in the war. George never married, and claims he lived so long "because he had no wife to nag him".

With the passing of so many veterans, it is amazing to share time with George.  He is in excellent health for a man in his nineties. He wears no glasses, aside for reading, walks without a cane, and drives himself around, including Atlantic City twice a month to gamble.  Yes, his favourite game is Black Jack. He still wears the 5th Air Force pin on his collar.

I showed him your photos from the dive. He was very pleased to see 'his' B-17, and said it was the perfect gift and to pass along his 'thank you' to you.”

The story didn’t end there.

Several months later I received an email from a lady called Rhonda in Australia. She’d never met George, having been born after the war, but he was a legend in her family. The US personnel came to Australia on the Queen Mary, round the tip of South Africa, dodging enemy subs en route, and disembarked in the pouring rain by Sydney Harbour Bridge. George was initially billeted on a sack of straw at Randwick Racecourse, then at a woman’s hostel, so jumped at the offer to stay with Rhonda’s family in-between missions.

Around the house he helped with laundry, changing nappies and fixing the family car.

“He did his country proud and from my point of view, he was such a help to my family at a time when everything was scarce. George left Australia in 1944 with nothing in his pockets and no belongings. He left everything he had with my family to help them out as the war was still going on.”

Rhonda had only just discovered that George was still alive, and was looking to get in contact with him. As it happened, I was able to reunite them through the miracle of email. George is currently planning a trip to Australia to meet Rhonda for the first time, and has declared an intention to return to the crash site at Boga Boga.

George Prezioso
Photo by Justin Taylan
of the Pacific Wreck Database

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also

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