More WWII wreckage found

Itanagar: Wreckage, believed to be of World War II aircraft, has been discovered in Papum Pare district of Arunachal Pradesh.

The wreckage was recently discovered by local villagers in the hills near the Bogi Nodi area, bordering Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, around 226km from here.

After the news of the discovery spread, a team of youths from Kimin circle, led by Taba Nobin, Nangram Kaha and Dukhum Jitu, headed towards the area.

Nobin told The Telegraph on Wednesday that the terrain being difficult, it took them three days on foot to reach the site and two days to return.

"The villagers told us that they had discovered debris that looked like the wreckage of a plane. When we went to the spot and searched around, we found several such scraps. We unearthed a few chunks of metal scraps from the site which appear to be the engine and radiator of a plane," he said.

"As we were not prepared for the findings, we did not have proper machinery and equipment to unearth and lug back the heavy metal objects," he added.

Nevertheless, Nobin and his team managed to carry a few scraps of metal back home, marked the area with the help of GPS device and also took enough photographs.

The team, after going through the location of the wreckage and the engine model and verifying their find over Internet, is assuming that the wreckage is that of American aircraft used in World War II to airlift supplies to Chinese forces battling the invading Japanese.

The planes flew over the eastern Himalayan region of Arunachal Pradesh, nicknamed "Hump".

The US defence department estimates that about 400 Allied aircrew were killed in crashes caused primarily by poor visibility in what was then the North East Frontier Agency. The wreckage of some US aircraft is occasionally located in the Arunachal Himalayas.

Nobin said, "We have tried to collect as much data as we could, but it requires proper verification by experts. We are ready to support research and interested persons, if any."