Papua New Guinea: B25C Mitchell Bomber - Help...

Late last year I got to dive a newly discovered aircraft wreck in Collingwood Bay, near Wanigela in Oro Province, PNG - the plane is apparently a B25C Mitchell Bomber and specifically the "Pistoff", that crashed on the 8th January 1943.

The wreck is about 200m off the beach and in about 17m of water, but not easy to find as the visibility was about 2m on the day we went there - I was diving with Tufi Dive Resort and on the way back from diving the Black Jack wreck at Cape Vogel, down at the southern end of Collingwood Bay.

The wreck is in quite good condition given the amount of time it has been underwater, but photography on the day was quite challenging to say the least... Here is the LINK to the images I took.

I am updating all the PNG location pages on my site and want to document a bit more about the wreck's history. I have been in touch with Justin Taylan of Pacific Wrecks who has documented what he knows about the wreck on this LINK but I wanted to see if anybody out there knows anything more about the "Pistoff" or can point me in the right direction?

Don

Thought I would close the loop back on this as I have now updated the B25 Mitchell bomber "Pistoff" page on my site based on everything I learned about this aircraft wreck.

Don

Don;

Beautiful page and site. Great job on gathering the history and photos that add so much to your uw exploration.

Jack

Nice supporting information on this dive site. It really adds to the story.

Todd

Excellent work. Great job on getting all the information together.

Thanks for sharing that.

EJB

Jack, Todd & EJB - thanks for the comments, great;y appreciated!

Don

Beautifully composed photos. What a thrill to dive a new wreck and one that is in such good condition. Would have loved to take video of it. Congrats

Steve

Beautifully composed photos. What a thrill to dive a new wreck and one that is in such good condition. Would have loved to take video of it. Congrats

Steve

Steve, thanks and yes it was quite a thrill diving it - particularly given that it was towards the end of a big day out... We had left Tufi at 07.30 that morning to make the 2.5 hour trip across Collingwood Bay to dive the much more famous Black Jack wreck at Boga Boga, which is a 50m dive in what turned out to be quite strong currents that day.

Then is was a detour back to "Pistoff" and a change of pace from 30m+ visibility to about 2m....

Don