and this wing mounted machine gun still has the live ammo
the majority of crashes on Espiritu Santo—approximately 99%—were the result of training accidents. “A handful of aircraft ran out of fuel in transit, but most ended up in the sea,” he explained. “Pilots low on fuel were trained to make controlled water landings while still having enough power to manage the aircraft.” Beyond training incidents, Stevenson noted that other causes included “bad strafing runs, failed bomb drops, flying into mountains in cloud, uncontrolled spins, mid-air collisions, and low-altitude maneuvers gone wrong—tragic losses of young lives.”
I didn't remember where Espiritu Santo was, so I googled it. I found that there is an area off the island called "Million Dollar Point" that is popular with divers. When the US Military was leaving the island after the war, they offered to sell their used equipment to the British and French. The British and French declined, figuring that the US would leave the equipment and they could have it for free. Instead, the US forces took all of the equipment to a wharf and drove it into the ocean or pushed it off with bulldozers, then drove the bulldozers off the wharf.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.atlasobscura.com/places/million-dollar-point
sigh, I wish people wouldn't send me links to stuff I've covered better... https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2015/05/million-dollar-point-where-us-military.html
DeleteI searched on the blog for Espiritu Santo, but didn't find anything about Million Dollar Point. I figured searching for million would turn up too many results, so I didn't look any further. I tried.
Deletelol, I think you'll laugh about this too... I posted this above, about the Corsairs, and Espiritu Santo didn't ring a bell, and I've posted several things about it before, but here's the punchline, Million Dollar Point does not appear in the search results on my blog, for Espiritu Santo, and I found that out when you sent me a link to Million Dollar Point and I knew I had posted about that, but, then it doesn't show up in the many results for a Espiritu Santo search! Other stuff does that I didn't remember posting. So I searched Million Dollar Point and it's the first result! HA! Dang irony!
DeleteAfter I said that I didn't search Million Dollar Point, I tried it last night and I got the same result as you. Any other time, it would have been pages deep in the search results.
Delete