The Dauntless mystery: From tragedy to discovery. Originally published in the South Pacific WWII Museum Newsletter, August 2025 – James (Jimmy) Carter
When the South Pacific WWII Museum recovered the battered remains of a Douglas SBD Dauntless aircraft from Port Vila International Airport in July 2023, one pressing question remained: whose aircraft was it, and what had happened to it? The story reaches back more than eighty years to a small coastal village on Efate’s eastern shore, where a young Wallace Andre lived. He remembers the day vividly. A U.S. dive bomber had been flying low over the village—a friendly gesture from an American pilot who had become friends with Wallace’s father, a labor organizer working with U.S. forces at nearby Havana Harbour. “He promised to fly over your house so you’d know it’s me,” Wallace recalls. Their home was easy to spot—the first in the village with a corrugated iron roof that glinted in the tropical sun.
On the appointed day, two Dauntless dive bombers took off from Takara Airfield in northern Efate, heading south along the coast in search of that shining rooftop. Wallace remembers the sound of their engines long before he saw them—one aircraft circling playfully overhead, the other skimming along the shoreline. Excited children ran to the beach, waving shirts and shouting as the planes dipped lower. In a remarkable moment of wartime goodwill, one pilot even dropped bundles of sweets from the cockpit.
But joy turned to horror in an instant. As one Dauntless pulled up, its underside struck a tall tree at the edge of the village. Damaged and losing fuel, the pilot tried to return to base but never made it. The aircraft crashed into the bush, bursting into flames. A relative of Wallace’s mother, who witnessed the crash, later recounted how U.S. medical personnel pulled the two airmen from the burning wreck. Both were badly injured. They were initially taken to the military hospital at Takara before being transferred to Bellevue Hospital in Port Vila. One died en route, and the other shortly after arrival.
For decades, the broken rear section of the fuselage lay abandoned near the Port Vila Aero Club, battered by cyclones and largely forgotten. In 2023, the South Pacific WWII Museum recovered what remained—a dented, stripped fragment of the once-proud Dauntless. Thanks to months of research and invaluable community recollections like Wallace’s, the relic is no longer a mystery. It stands today as a tangible link to a moment of humanity, loss, and enduring connection in Vanuatu’s wartime history. To learn more and support the South Pacific WWII Museum, visit www.southpacificwwiimuseum.com.
