Australian WWII Plane Down in Timor

When we were in East Timor, back in 2017, our guide took us to the location of a downed Australian plane during WWII. He’d suggested that it was a helicopter that his Grandfather had witnessed crash back during WWII, but we weren’t so sure, given that helicopters weren’t really around back then.

I emailed the Australian War Memorial to see if they known anything about a helicopter, but all they replied was;

Dear Ben,

Thank you for your email to the Research Centre regarding this wreckage.

Helicopters were in their infancy during the Second World War, and only really started to be used in warfare during Korea. I can find a lot of aircraft going down in Timor or over the Timor Sea, but no helicopters. 

I hope this has been helpful. Please do not hesitate to contact us if we can assist you further.

So I’m fairly sure it was an Aussie plane because of the anglicised letters and numbers on the wreckage.

Either way it was pretty great to find it.