Warbird Information Exchange

By Nick Squires
5:12PM BST 28 Aug 2008
The remarkable discovery, which has yet to be confirmed by military authorities, was made by astonished trekkers walking the Kokoda Trail, a tortuous mountain path which witnessed intense fighting between Japanese and Australian forces in 1942.

"I couldn't make it out at first. It wasn't until the wind blew that you could really see (that) it is in a harness. There are goggles and it appears to be caught up in cables, so presumably it is an airman," said trekking guide David Collins.

The moss-covered remains, barely visible in the dense jungle foliage, were initially spotted by an Australian police officer who was on a trek led by Mr Collins.

He was using a telephoto lens to photograph exotic plants in the tree tops when he saw a jumble of cords and bits of parachute harness surrounded by creepers and palm leaves.

"We had a few police officers on the 19-man trek. One was taking photos with a large lens of the trees and flowers," said Mr Collins, a firefighter who works part-time as a trekking guide for Melbourne-based adventure company No Roads Expeditions. "He then discovered what looks like the remains of a body." Photographs taken by the trekking party show a dark object hanging about 45ft above the ground.

The trekkers marked the tree from which the object dangled so that it can be easily found again.

If confirmed as a human body it is likely to be the remains of an Australian, American or Japanese airman, left undisturbed in the forest for more than 60 years.

Papua New Guinea witnessed intense air and land battles during the Second World War as the Allies finally halted Japan's southwards advance and began a massive counter-attack across the South Pacific.

The Australian military is preparing to send representatives to Papua New Guinea to investigate the highly unusual discovery and US and Japanese authorities are checking their records of missing airmen.

A spokesman for the Australian Defence Force said the location of the find, about half-way along the 60 mile-long Kokoda Track, is close to a flight path regularly used by Allied aircraft and that several aircraft went missing in the region.

The track crosses the precipitous Owen Stanley Range of mountains, which forms the spine of Papua New Guinea.

In 1942 poorly trained Australian militia troops were deployed to halt 6,000 advancing Japanese soldiers who intended to take the strategic town and colonial capital of Port Moresby, regarded as a springboard for the invasion of Australia.

Months of fighting along the treacherous jungle trail were marked by hand-to-hand combat, night time ambushes, illness and even cannibalism, as starving Japanese soldiers ate the flesh of dead Australians.

In what has been described by one historian as "a knife fight out of the Stone Age", the Australian "diggers" eventually repelled the Japanese and drove them out of New Guinea.

The track has become popular with Australian hikers, trekking firms and even corporate incentive groups.