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Is this the wreckage of A51-006?

These photos were forwarded by Tom Forrest, who writes: "I have located a debris field and cannot identify the aircraft type. I suspect it is Buffalo A-51-006 destroyed in a bombing raid on Hughes Airfied 1942. Can you or anyone else confirm the armour plates [top photo], rudder pedal or throttle [bottom photo] are Buffalo equipment? One point here: the rudder pedal is the largest piece of wreckage found at site." (The photos are large; give them time to load.)

This answer was posted on the message board:

"According to the very detailled photographs of the Buffalo's interior, published in Aussie Gerry Byk's "Buffalo down under", the rudder pedal shown in this photo is to 99.9 percent a pedal of a Buffalo. What startles me a little is, that in 1942 ANY metal was in very short supply. Yet, instead of collecting these bits and sending them to the smelter to recycle them, they were left out there? As kind of a memory or warning? Or is the site so remote, it's allmost inaccessible to anybody?"

(And the answer to that question is, yes, the site is near Darwin, which is remote even today, and which in 1942 was 2,000 miles from the nearest town over a dirt road.)

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