THE FLYING DUTCHMAN
Stories at the intersection of aviation archaeology and community development.
PARTNERS
Connections
Back before the pandemic, I received a call from author James Campbell. While writing his most recent book, Heart of the Jaguar, he’d seen one of my films and wanted to ask me about working on a film project in Papua New Guinea. As a boy growing up rural Wisconsin, James heard stories about fierce jungle fighting in the South Pacific during WWII, and the veterans who fought there. He knew these men as his neighbors, and saw them in town parades. They were part of the 126th Infantry Regiment, a National Guard unit based out of Michigan, hastily called to action after the Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor. Rumor had it, they’d experienced some of the most horrific fighting of any American soldiers in the war. It was only years later while canoeing up the Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, that he suddenly realized: “This is the place from the stories!” Over the next couple decades, he would return again and again to unravel the history of the 126th Infantry in New Guinea, along the way finding the adventures and friendships of a lifetime. The book he wrote, The Ghost Mountain Boys, took him seven years.
Carl Stenberg.
Donna Wilson’s grandfather, Carl Stenberg, fought in the New Guinea Campaign, and his memories would play a significant role in James’s book, even if they remained mysterious to his own family members. “I saw a picture of him holding a koala in Australia,” Donna says. “And to me, that’s what he did during the war… he was in Australia holding a koala. It just wasn’t something that he or any of the men talked about.” The truth, which she would discover in books like James’s, and in the photographs and papers left behind by her grandfather, was beyond belief. In October 1942, a battalion of American soldiers spent 48 days climbing a 10,000 foot mountain range, crossing near a peak called Ghost Mountain, through some of the wildest, most geologically-disturbed terrain on earth. The route they followed was known as the Kapa Kapa Trail. They arrived on the other side exhausted, starving, sickened with malaria, dysentery and typhus, to go into battle with the Japanese at a village called Buna, converted into an impenetrable stronghold of bunkers and machine gun emplacements. For Donna, The Ghost Mountain Boys, filled in many of the missing pieces of her grandfather Carl’s story. But she still wanted to know more. As she sat beside him in hospice, she decided that she would hike the same trail he had taken all those years ago. She would climb Ghost Mountain.
Donna climbs in the footsteps of the Ghost Mountain Boys, and her grandfather.
Years later, James’s book would find its way into the hands of a young pilot, Gary Bustin, in Papua New Guinea. Growing up an MK—missionary kid—in the mountains of Goroka Province, on the north side of the island, Gary was a luminous “waitskin'“ among his darker-skinned buddies. They wore loincloths and got into all kinds of trouble. Early in his childhood the family moved down to Lae—of Amelia Earhart fame—where workers laying the newest water and sewer lines were digging up old WWII relics and piling them in the streets. “My buddies and I would play with the old rifles, we had metal hats and live grenades that were rusted… it really brought World War Two home to me as a kid.” For stories, they’d listen to a salty old man who lived on the beach and had been a “coast watcher” for the Allies, keeping watch day after day for Japanese ships. In a place where the world’s most devastating conflict turned its eye for three long, bloody years, history wasn’t just academic. At twenty one, Gary started a float plane operation to bring medical care and supplies to remote parts of the island. “I fell in love with the people of Papua New Guinea,” says Gary. “I decided I was going to dedicate my life to making a difference in this country.” And he never forgot about his love for history.
The forest is so thick that a view of the surrounding mountains is rare. In a patch of land cleared for gardens, Amu points to Ghost Mountain, obscured as usual by heavy clouds.
Thus six years after that first phone call, I find myself, along with James, Donna, Gary, as part of ten-member expedition headed deep into the Owen Stanley Mountains of Papua New Guinea. We’re about six thousand feet above sea level, halfway up a muddy shark fin that drops precariously on either side. I’ve got a camera in one hand and a tree root in the other as I pull myself up another few feet. Amu Amos, who has helped me these last three days carry my personal things and film gear, scampers ahead and looks back to check on me. Through trees, a pale snake of grassland and water marks the bottom of the Mimai River valley, our approach only a few days ago. It’s the last, toughest climb before we camp at a high clearing that is the gateway to The Flying Dutchman, a C-47 Douglas Skytrain laying quiet in some moss-grown cathedral, where 17 soldiers—our countrymen—died in 1942.
“Villagers still talk of the war. These war stories have become part of the local mythology, passed down by people from one generation to the next around the fire. Resentment lingers. The war destroyed villages and innocent people’s lives.”
—James Campbell, The Ghost Mountain Boys
Nothing But History
Waiting at the top of the ridge is Peter Gamgee, an Ozzie of few—if humorous —words. He wears his Getaway Trekking jersey, a backpack with GPS unit attached at the shoulder, shorts and spats over his boots to keep out leeches, chiggers and other critters.
A veteran of the Kokoda Trail, where Australians pushed back the Japanese in their overland invasion of Port Moresby, Peter was initially drawn to the Kapa Kapa for the challenge it presented. In 2009, he and a handful of hikers tried to cross the country in 12 days.
Kuname, the lead porter, confers with Peter before heading down the trail to camp. He is, as Peter says, coming into his own as a leader in the village, part of a new generation of younger villagers whose fathers and mothers accompanied James and Peter on their first expeditions, and who will oversee the villages’ continued transition into modernity. Now, they overseeing our party’s transition into camp: gather wood for fire, boiling water, pulling tarps over a structure of wood they’ve lashed together with jungle fibers as the members of the expedition wander to a frigid stream to bathe and climb into warm clothes. Dinner is spaghetti and prepackaged sauce, supplemented by soup and a true anomale of cuisine (to my American sensibilities), Wheetabix. Over dinner, Peter tells us more about The Flying Dutchman, and our route the following day.
During a dramatization, a man speaks about the impact of the Second World War on his people. The sign reads, “Thunders, lightning strikes. My people lost… what am I?” Certainly a reference to planes, guns, bombs, and other powerful forms of mechanized death that descended on the island.
The next morning, we float out over an alien landscape, legs sore from three days of steady climbing, breath fogging in the cold. It’s a chimeric landscape: weird fusion of rain forest and tundra: great spongy tufts of thin-stemmed grass, a quilt of oranges and pale greens, midget palm trees, giant spiderwebs a-glisten with dew drops. The final climb to The Flying Dutchman is some of the toughest yet, a steep mud-slick traverse through moss-grown forest.
Peter’s own story is fascinating. He worked on Over-The-Horizon radar during the Cold War, leading up a team that developed a system which was recently sold by the Australian government to Canada, to the tune of several billion dollars. He has, it seems, always been concerned with things in the sky. But his real passion, he tells me, is “the development of people.”
Donna’s a great example. In 2016, she arrived in New Guinea determined to hike the Ghost Mountain Trail, and never having done any serious hiking before. The first week was brutal. When they arrived at Laronu, the gateway to the mountains, Peter radioed for a helicopter. Donna expected that she would be on it, bound for Port Moresby and ashamed. But it was only for resupply. Instead of send her home, Peter suggested she hire a local to carry her gear. They still had a long way to go. Over the next few weeks, Donna found a strength she didn’t know she had, and which only comes from pushing oneself beyond one’s limits.
The trip was monumental in other regards. James was along, this time with his 15-year old daughter. The women and girls were entranced by Rachel. Her long, mostly straight hair, compared to theirs which was curly. The fact that she was undertaking such a long voyage with a group of men.
There were harder moments. Peter tells me later: In 2008, while passing through the village of Jaure, a woman came crawling out of her hut to meet him. She’d developed a tropical ulcer on her leg, likely from a simple scratch or insect bite, which had festered in the absence of simple things we take for granted: clean water, gauze pads and band-aids, neosporin. The smell was awful. “We were on the satellite phone with anyone, mining company to see if they could bring a helicopter in.” It was futile, they left everything they had: a cleaning regimen and antibiotics, but it was clear that she didn’t have a chance.
Peter and James have endeared themselves to the people of the Mimai River valley. They wrote them a song during our trip—a real honor, as the songs are part of their oral history tradition.
To the visiting Westerner, their lives seem idyllic. But a chance scratch can fester in a tropical ulcer that steals limbs and life. Half the villagers have a cough. Villagers hitch a ride on the plane or walk into the capitol city. The only schoolhouse in the region, at Laronu, has over 150 students, and is taught by a man who doubles as a pastor. Too, as we pass through the village, we see solar panels. An iPad used to take pictures. James notices, “They are becoming aware of the modern world, and they want it,” His tone is a touch rueful, ambivalent. “Who wouldn’t?”
It was on this trip that Peter and James were struck by a realization… the people of the Mimai River valley had nothing to offer the world in return… nothing, perhaps, except history. A history. And a very real piece of that history: The Flying Dutchman.
Thus began Peter’s search for the plane.
“I ended the trip with a conviction that the intention to help the communities along The Ghost Mountain Trail is absolutely the right thing to do.”
—Peter Gamgee, In Search of the Flying Dutchman
The Flying Dutchman
Halfway through the Ghost Mountain Boys’ march over the mountains, army command located functional airfields on the north side of the island. The heroic march was, for all intents and purposes, meaningless, the decision of a general who depending on which side of history you fell on, had either miscalculated because of fog of war, or an egomaniac whose quest for personal glory would not be hindered by the lives and suffering of his men.
Planes began crossing the Owen Stanley Mountains, ferrying troops and supplies in preparation for the battle at Buna. One such plane was The Flying Dutchman.
On November 10, 1942, this Douglass C-47 Skytrain departed the airfield at Port Moresby, bound for Pongani airfield on the North Coast. The plane that left the aerodrome that day carried three crew members and twenty members of the 126th Infantry Regiment.
Successor to the civilian DC-3, which at that time carried most of the civilian air traffic in the world, the DC-47 was a militarized version delivered to the US military in 1941, quickly becoming the workhorse of the Pacific. It was a versatile aircraft: it had two radial-pistoned Pratt & Whitney engines that could function with pistons down, and could transport men, material and had a modified tail allowing it to tow gliders.
The Flying Dutchman lies above 9,000 feet, located in the moss forests below the summit of Ghost Mountain.
The air routes across the Owen Stanley mountains, which rose to 10,000 feet from sea level, were not well established at that time. The plane entered rain clouds which often surround the peaks in the area, and experienced a strong downdraft. The pilot was able to tilt the nose up before the plane crash, which likely saved the lives of half those onboard. As Peter describes the scene, the soldiers gear would have been piled in the center aisle, which flew forward in the impact. Grenades detonated and the fuel drums caught fire. Edward Holleman let everyone out.
Peter began searching in earnest. He had little information to go on: the account of government patrol officer who had visited the wreck in 1962; a manuscript by an Australian expat, Robert Piper, who had assisted in the rescue; an interview with Bruce Hoy a former curator at the Papua New Guinea museum, who had visited the crash site with locals in 1988. But without GPS technology, the word “found” did not have any real meaning, there were no trails to the crash and no villages in the area, Hoy had flown in by helicopter while assisting the army on another crash recovery, and the locals who located the plane for him were perhaps no likely to be able to do so again… the word “found” didn’t really apply. Everyone who had “found” the plane had used local assistance. The plane vanished back into the forest. Through accounts of multiple sources, telemetry and lots of map-staring, he narrowed down the location to a site southeast of Mount Obree, or Ghost Mountain. We spoke in the Spring of 2025 and he told me he was almost positive, but there was no guarantee.
Halfway through the Ghost Mountain Boys’ march over the mountains, army command located functional airfields on the north side of the island. The heroic march was, for all intents and purposes, meaningless, the decision of a general who depending on which side of history you fell on, had either miscalculated because of fog of war, or an egomaniac whose quest for personal glory would not be hindered by the lives and suffering of his men. The ensuing battle at Buna was, as James notes in his book “a knife fight out of the stone age.”
Would our own march also, be meaningless?
In their own way, the months following our trip contained their own tragedies. A villager who wants to be a “Big Man” harangues the expedition. In the months that follow, tragedy will strike the villages of the Mimai. On our group WhatsApp, Peter informs us that one of the carriers died. For a moment I’m terrified, remembering Amu and his cough. Two months later, we get knews that another died, probably from malaria. What is the point of trying beat.
Peter is headed back in May to install solar panels and lighting in the medical clinic and, pending the government’s acceptance of Starlink, a communication system.
Kuname and Didibu help Gary cross a river in the village of Laronu. As Gary said in his interview with me, “They welcomed us into their world… we each have something to offer the other.”
Peter finishes his interview with the story. Two years after passing through Jaure, he returned with a group of hikers. He was worried: recalling how he’d treated Pamela, there was no way she could’ve survived. Planning an expedition like this is an endeavor of great complexity, and he had to take in all possibilities. All land in the valley is owned by the people, so of course you need the people’s permission to walk along the trail. If something bad happens, it is not uncommon for people to hold resentment toward those who are involved. Curses, evil spirits and such. “I wasn’t sure if we’d be speared,” says Peter.
“How’s Pamela?” he asked fearfully. Pamela? someone said, “Pamela’s fine. She’s out in the gardens.” Peter pauses here, tears coming even all these years later.“We couldn’t believe it,” said Peter. “We went up there. We just melted.” All that to say, maybe there is a reason to keep going, even if the way is unclear. I remember
No rest for the weary. Upon arriving back in the capital, Gary and PNG Tribal organized a press junket at the National Museum. I stayed up all night looking through footage and cut this teaser together for the event… what an experience!