STRANGER than fiction. How many aircraft, both military and civilian, do you imagine have had forced landings, or crashed, in the Port Stephens area over the years?
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That's the question posed by a Weekender reader in response to last week's story about the Sabre jet explosion over The Junction, in inner-city Newcastle, in August 1966. My first reaction was probably two, or three, or a half a dozen, maybe. Who really knows, as memories are so short.
So, I started checking on a light aircraft crash-landing and sinking at Little Beach, probably in the early 1990s, but I couldn't find a trace of it. This was despite it being front page news in The Herald at the time. I know it occurred because I covered the accident, but without knowing an exact date I was stymied.
Maybe it was also hard to find the yarn because, although the aircraft sank in deep water (about 10 metres) off the beach, it wasn't a running story. The plane was salvaged surprisingly quickly and the two males onboard were shaken, but otherwise unhurt, and went home. End of story.
Exploring the subject further, I found some possible answers, all a bit startling. After all, it's not a subject most of us think about much. Would you believe there has been probably 15 obvious port air emergencies, some fatal, since the 1920s?
Most aviation accidents in Port Stephens though seem to have been since the 1940s.
But could a truer air accident tally be around 30? It's speculation though, and it's likely we'll never know the true estimate unless there's a very detailed examination of records by a dedicated Hunter aviation sleuth.
While memories fade and older records can get lost with the passing of the years, I remember a Karuah history group a few years ago investigating plane crashes in their area. They then claimed Williamtown RAAF may have lost 13 Vampire jets alone in the area over past decades.
Of these, probably the most publicised and horrific accident occurred when two RAAF Vampire jet pilots were killed within moments of each other while flying over Limeburners Creek on May 13, 1951.
One of the aircraft seemed to be following the other, when the first Vampire jet suddenly nose-dived into the Karuah River, throwing up columns of mud and water. The first pilot may have suffered a blackout, but the second Vampire jet pilot didn't realise what had happened until too late when he tried to straighten out, but failed, to also crash nearby.
The best remembered early aviation drama seems to have been on Anna Bay beach in April 1921. It involved Australia's legendary aviation pioneer Bert Hinkler in blinding rain being forced to make an emergency landing there.
He was unhurt, but his Avro Baby biplane was damaged. He tramped through the wet sand hills to reach Mrs Lucy Upton's farm and a telephone to report his whereabouts.
Two horses were used the next day to pull the stranded aircraft down the beach to Stockton. The aeroplane was then dismantled and taken by sea from Newcastle to Sydney by steamer.
One of the Hunter's most deadly air accidents, however, seems a paradox. This crash of a huge Catalina at Port Stephens near Jimmy's Beach on May 24, 1943, is today often forgotten, although seven crew members lost their lives. The amphibious flying boat crashed opposite Nelson Head (the port's inner light) during a rough weather landing.
A memorial to this wartime loss does exist, but is easily missed on the lawn in front of the hilltop museum there overlooking the tragic scene.
Inside the museum itself, a Port Stephens Historical Society (PSHS) exhibit recalls the loss of 14 lives (including on the Catalina) in four military aircraft lost locally between May 1943 and April 1945. Beside the 'Cat', two Beaufighters were also involved, while a Vultee Vengence A27-91 crashed into the water during bomb training off Nelson Bay.
Then there's the delayed report by Fingal Bay island shell grit miner Arthur Murdoch. He said that during World War II Mosquito fighter pilots seemed to delight in flying dangerously low over the ocean.
"Later in the war, I found the complete wing of one plane washed up on the (Fingal Spit) beach. Nothing was mentioned in the newspapers, of course; evidently one skimmed a little too low and hit the sea," Murdoch said in 1989.
The islander had witnessed the Jimmy's Beach air disaster and remembered one Catalina flying boat patrolling the coast every evening just before dusk. It resembled an enormous pelican.
Much later, a most spectacular military crash occurred when a sleek Mirage jet fighter crash landed just 30 metres from Tanilba Bay homes on May 2, 1980. Short of fuel and suffering from a reported aircraft undercarriage malfunction, the jet and its pilot were prevented from landing at Williamtown airport. The pilot ejected, and the aeroplane plunged into mud flats near Peace Parade, missing houses. Wreckage was everywhere.
The RAAF was criticised at the time because a number of Williamtown's Mirage fighters had crashed in previous years.
Earlier, in September 1968, an RAAF helicopter crashed (but no one was hurt) during night manoeuvres near Tilligerry Creek. Then, in October 1968, an RAAF pilot ejected to safety after his French-built Mirage jet struck trouble over the Salt Ash weapons range and crashed, creating a large crater at Limeburners Creek.
But it's not always military aircraft that suffer mishaps. In April 2010, a reported home-built aircraft made a forced landing just south of Anna Bay. The pilot of the single-engine light plane managed to land safely (with facial cuts) after sending out a distress call that his windscreen had imploded.
The precise location of some crashed aircraft may, however, always remain a mystery.
In March 1970, a Nelson Bay fisherman recovered a pressure gauge from 90ft (27m) down near Broughton Island 10 miles (16km) out from the Port Stephens heads. He told police he found the barnacle-encrusted gauge in his net after trawling about three miles (4.8km) from the island.
It appeared to be part of an aeroplane's instrumentation. It was thought it might be part of a Mirage jet fighter that had crashed into the sea north of Newcastle almost three years before, in May 1967.
The Mirage emerged from a cloud in a steep dive and crashed. The pilot was killed. A search of the ocean failed to find debris. At the time, it was claimed seven RAAF Mirages had been lost between 1964 and 1968.
