Hawaii’s military history pops up in unexpected places.
Sometimes it’s right underfoot. Or under dive fin.
The latter was the case in 1977, when three friends who were spearfishing in Kailua Bay found the wreck of a World War II-era P-40 Warhawk fighter in relatively shallow water.
THE WARHAWK
The P-40 Warhawk was the main U.S. fighter plane at the start of World War II and was flown throughout the war:
» Maximum speed: 362 mph; cruising speed 235 mph
» Range: 850 miles
» Size: 31 feet 9 inches long, 12 feet 4 inches high, with wingspan of 37 feet 4 inches and weight of 9,100 pounds loaded
» Weapons: Six .50-caliber machine guns, 700 pounds of bombs
Source: National Museum of the U.S. Air Force
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A .50-caliber machine gun, two .30-caliber machine guns, a clock, gauge, ammunition and other items went home with the trio.
It took 37 years for the fighter — or what’s left of it — to get some attention again.
According to aviation historian Dave Trojan, the Allison V-12 engine still sits upright in 10 to 12 feet of water.
Landing gear and corroded structural ribbing are also there.
But therein lies another mystery: Whose plane was it?
The question may not be answered soon. But the good news is that parts of the plane will be going on display.
Mike Holton, one of the three Kainalu Park friends to retrieve the plane parts in 1977, is providing some of the artifacts for a new air terminal display at the Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps base, Trojan said.
Trojan, who lives in California, said he spent months searching records to try to identify the plane.
"And I was not able to do that, so it’s still kind of a mystery plane," he said. "All I know is it’s definitely an early model P-40 B or C. It could have been an accident, or it could have been shot down. It’s definitely an early war wreck that nobody really knew about."
The engine serial number didn’t provide a match, he said.
Holton got in touch with Trojan, who did a lot of the historical digging.
Trojan wondered whether the plane could have been piloted by 1st Lt. Samuel W. Bishop, the third of three P-40 fliers to get off the ground at Bellows Field during the attack on Dec. 7, 1941.
Japanese fighters came in on Bishop’s tail and badly shot up his plane, forcing the pilot to ditch the aircraft about a half-mile from shore, Trojan said.
Complicating the issue was the report of a second possible wreck site underwater off the end of the old Bellows Field runway, where parts of a wheel and landing gear possibly remain, according to Trojan.
Trojan said the wreck discovered by Holton and his friends is most likely not Bishop’s plane.
The Kailua Bay wreck site is more than 3 miles from Bellows Field, making it too far away to be Bishop’s P-40, he said.
A review of all P-40 Army Air Corps accidents on Oahu conducted by Craig Fuller of Aviation Archaeological Investigation and Research found that at least 54 P-40B and P-40C aircraft had major accidents and were written off during the war, Trojan said.
The wreck off the end of Bellows is more likely the remnants of Bishop’s aircraft, Trojan added, because most accounts state he crashed closer to the field.
Holton remembers that when the Allison V-12 engine and other debris were found in 1977, it wasn’t immediately clear it was from an airplane.
"First I thought it was maybe a speedboat (wreck)," Holton said by phone from Las Vegas, where he now lives. "I knew that these surplus engines were popular with speedboats after the war."
Holton said he, Charles Chamberland and Steen Wittmaack made several trips out to the site.
On the second trip out, Holton, who was then 18, saw an angular corner jutting out of the sand.
"I started dusting the sand away, and it started taking the shape of what looked like the top of a briefcase with a handle on it," he recalled. "I pulled it out of the sand, and it turned out to be one of the stainless-steel ammo boxes for one of the .30-caliber machine guns."
On it was a plate that said it was the ammo box for a Browning .30-caliber right-hand inboard machine gun for a P-40B.
"And then we got pretty excited," he said.
All of them knew what a P-40 was.
"You are kids and you just start dreaming — maybe it was Pearl Harbor," he said.
Eventually they found ammunition and two .50-caliber and two .30-caliber machine guns.
The .30-caliber guns were retrieved, along with one of the heavier .50-caliber guns, he said.
The bigger gun was especially a challenge for the snorkeling youths.
"It took us a little over three hours to literally drag it along the bottom," Holton said.
They’d dive down, grab the gun and heave it forward before heading up for air, he said.
A list was made of the recovered items, and Holton’s father tried to report the find to military authorities.
"My father contacted the Air Force. He contacted the Army. He contacted everybody back then. And nobody cared — not one bit," Holton said. "Nobody would lay claim to it. Nobody wanted to even bother to help us."
Later on, "the machine guns were given to a friend in Waimanalo. My family left Hawaii shortly thereafter," he said.
The friend kept them in his basement for years.
"We can’t find them. They don’t know what happened to them," Holton said. "The father passed away. He may have given them to somebody." Holton said he’d like to track down the guns.
"I’d like to see them in this (Marine Corps) display," he said.
Items that Holton still does have — the P-40 joystick, an eight-day clock, a carburetor temperature gauge and some linked-belt ammo — are being offered up, he said.
In March 2013 ground was broken for a $46.6 million Marine Corps Air Station Operations Complex at Kaneohe Bay.
"In January they are going to start installing these displays to tell the history of the base," Trojan said. "Part of the displays are going to be the artifacts that were recovered. They are going into a display case, and that’s going to be part of the new air terminal."
