KITTYHAWK JUNGLE RESCUE

P-40 GETS A NEW LEASE ON LIFE

- ROBERT S. GRANT

Confined in a microworld of levers, switches, and instruments, Royal Australian Air Force Flight Sergeant James Denman Harvey slid his Curtiss P-40’s eight-piece canopy backwards and looked down. Hammered by tropical heat and skin slippery in perspiration, he studied the surface of a newly captured airstrip called “Tadji.” Harvey and fellow No. 78 Squadron pilots believed ground engineers had repaired a landing area on the north coast of New Guinea after defeated Japanese soldiers scurried into the shrubbery on April 25, 1944.

Harvey watched the first P-40 in the landing pattern sequence touch and immediately flip. Apprehensive, but with no other choice since every aircraft’s low-fuel-pressure light flickered red after an exhausting positioning flight, he lowered the “alighting gear.” Concentrating on landing shorter and slower, his 30-inch tires and oleo-pneumatic shock struts locked into place under the 37-foot, 3.5-inch wings. At contact, he, too, went upside down in a flurry of lacerated leaves, shredded bark and surprised ants.

Bomb craters created by previous softening-up attacks had disturbed the water table and turned the ground engineers’ handiwork into gigantic mud pies. A desperate construction commander ordered Harvey’s P-40 pushed aside before the concussed pilot could extricate himself. The remaining squadron aircraft managed to find compact spots and finished their flights correct side up. As for Harvey’s favored airplane, A-29-141 (USAAF 42-10487), became a grub-infested, creeper-covered, insect tenement.

Recovery & restoration