Vultee Vengeance A27-295 Crash

[CINDERS]

My wife and I visited this site on a camping road trip 2 days ago way out in our desolate scrub it was a miracle anyone survived it is very remote.
There is nothing here but thick low lying scrub with no human within cooee of the place today let alone in 1944.
We scrounged some projectiles (Pic # 4) which we believe the Vultee was armed with 30/06 rounds as a previous visit years ago by a friend netted some live rounds.
You can see that there has been impact damage to them both one loosing its tip and scuffing the other flattened/dented by the impact.
There was no fire as it crashed without fuel the engine embedded some 3 meters into the ground, wreckage was scattered for 4 hectares or 9.8 acres.
RIP F/Sgt C.L King

Burst from the RAAF page on it;
The plaque commemorates the crash of a Vultee Vengeance aeroplane and its crew. The memorial was rededicated on the 16th August, 2008.

In 1944, a Royal Australian Air Force (R.A.A.F.) Vultee Vengeance dive-bomber went missing on a training flight from Pearce near Perth. The aeroplane had apparently become lost and run out of fuel. A few days later a chance conversation between a commercial pilot and Squadron Leader Haber, the Commanding Officer of No. 7 Communications Unit at Pearce, revealed that the former had sighted what he thought was a tent in the bush east of Narembeen. Next morning a Beaufort bomber identified a parachute, but no sign of life and a large number of soldiers from Northam were sent for a ground search.

The pilot Warrant Officer J. Ingram was located at a remote farmhouse some four days after the crash and told his story. On realising that he was nearly out of fuel he had warned the navigator Flight-Sergeant C. L. King to bale out and went through the necessary roll to allow him to do so. He then climbed for height and baled out himself. There being no sign of King, he headed west and found the farmhouse, after fours days, during which he had only a goanna to eat. A huge effort was mounted to try and locate King and the aeroplane.

The wreckage was finally found by a Tigermoth on the 2nd of September in extremely thick and inhospitable scrub. There was no trace of King or his parachute, it was believed that he had been hit by the large tailplane of the Vengeance as he bailed out.

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