Weird CTD issue...

***MaskRider*** · March 27th, 2015, 12:47

Ok Dave, here is what I am thinking. The only major airfield in SW Sulawesi-Celebes was appx 11 miles NE of the town of Makassar. And apparently was a multi-runway complex. 11 miles NE of town is where the international airport is located today. The name of the WWII airfield was Mandai Airfield. There was a notorious POW camp located there. Over at Pacific Wrecks they list missions flown against Mandai. At least one is described to being flown against the "runways" (plural) at Mandai. Sometimes the targets were referred to as Makassar I, as though there was more than one airstrip. I am beginning to think that some how or another this had to be Limboeng. Any thoughts?

MR

***MaskRider*** · March 27th, 2015, 13:24

Ok Dave, Fibber. You guys have made a total believer of me. That Makassar Mandai airfield idea I mentioned above is totally out to lunch. However, the switch that turned on the light-bulb for me came from a web site dedicated to the POWs in the camp at Mandai Airfield. There is a map at the their website. It shows the location of Mandai airfield. As I suspected- it is where the modern airport is located. But also included in the map is the rest of the SW Sulawesi going south from there. I attach the image with arrows added by me. See anything you recognize? So I went down that-a-way in GoogleEarth and lo and beheld! And it totally matches up with the info on that intelligence photo: the town with the modern day name of Limbung is almost exactly 2 1/2 miles NW as in the intel photo notes; the name of the waterway as shown in the old map is listed identical as on the intel map. The whole deal. Not much left in the way of visual evidence in GoogleEarth but I also attached screenies from there. Yes, that waterway you mentioned Fibber? Is this it? It definitley does match up.

Excellent. Another airfield to build!

MR

PS here is link to East Indies Camp Archives website

***MaskRider*** · March 27th, 2015, 14:09

So it would lay out looking something like this- with eh runways and river course drawn in.

MR

**Fibber** · March 27th, 2015, 16:16

.....glad to be of help to you. MR pic one matches that which I found and seems to be the only matching location. Some of the wartime depics seem to be a little removed, but putting in the lats and longs reduced to decimals helped.
You guys are the real workers here I am only a worker bee.

Glad to be of help and now time for a new Blue Moon!

**Blood_Hawk23** · March 27th, 2015, 16:58

Hey Fibber,

Can you find some WWI aerial pics of Biggin Hill? Or any WWI pics of the base.

MR,

Wish I had time to learn what your doing. Want to help redo WWI Europe. LOL

**Fibber** · March 27th, 2015, 17:08

"Can you find some WWI aerial pics of Biggin Hill? Or any WWI pics of the base."

Maybe a tall order but I will see what I can find. (Special orders are a 12 pack of Blue Moons!

)

**Blood_Hawk23** · March 27th, 2015, 17:58

Yeah its a very tall order. So far I've found a couple descriptions and thats about it. 100 year old history is a PIA. I'm going to run with the standard 900'x2000' of British bases during WWI. I have in the description that hangers and buildings were built on the south end of the field. I'll use old WWII aerials to help place them in a "best guess" location.

**dvslats** · March 28th, 2015, 01:05

Originally Posted by MaskRider

However, the switch that turned on the light-bulb for me came from a web site dedicated to the POWs in the camp at Mandai Airfield. There is a map at the their website. It shows the location of Mandai airfield. As I suspected- it is where the modern airport is located. But also included in the map is the rest of the SW Sulawesi going south from there. I attach the image with arrows added by me. See anything you recognize? So I went down that-a-way in GoogleEarth and lo and beheld! And it totally matches up with the info on that intelligence photo: the town with the modern day name of Limbung is almost exactly 2 1/2 miles NW as in the intel photo notes; the name of the waterway as shown in the old map is listed identical as on the intel map. The whole deal. Not much left in the way of visual evidence in GoogleEarth but I also attached screenies from there. Yes, that waterway you mentioned Fibber? Is this it? It definitley does match up.

I've got to say Chris and Fibber, you've nailed it.

For some stupid reason I was keeping to the area just south of the dammed up river. The darker area. Probably because that's where the coordinates referenced to.
I thought the US military doesn't make mistakes.

Seriously though, the map from East Indies Camp Archives is the key. I had never seen that one.
Put another notch in the pistol grip.

Now I have to go there in CFS2 and see what it looks like.

Good Work,
Dave

**Fibber** · March 28th, 2015, 06:06

...you guys are better at the mechanics of this but this is just s thought. Is there anyway to make a transparency of DVSLATS "Limbo" and overlay it on the present photos that we have to give a almost perfect fit for placement?

**Fibber** · March 28th, 2015, 08:54

..being that Briggin Hill did not become a real areodrome until 1918 some pics are hard to find. It seem that a lot of what was there was torn down in the inter-war period. See this site; (if you already haven't) http://www.rizonjet.com/culture/bigg...n-in-the-world

Maybe contact the author dor more info or leads.

***MaskRider*** · March 28th, 2015, 09:08

Originally Posted by Fibber

...you guys are better at the mechanics of this but this is just s thought. Is there anyway to make a transparency of DVSLATS "Limbo" and overlay it on the present photos that we have to give a almost perfect fit for placement?

Hi Fibber,

Yes, there is. The image that I posted above is from a multi-layered PSP image that I quickly threw togther in PSP7 last night. Olive green runways and blue waterway I drew in hastily by hand. I post another copy here. I did some tweaking to it. I tweaked the rotation on the intel image so that it fit what I knew to be the true north orientation of the underlying image from GoogleEarth (I hope that is so). I also resized it. Some of the roads in the modern image are the same taxiways shown in the intel image so I rotated and resized to fit those taxiways. Then I drew in the runways and river. It is almost a perfect fit and probably as close as we will get. I then used the tweaked image as an overlay in google Earth and drew in polygons where the runways will be located against the backdrop of of the modern day landscape. I plan on using it as my initial set up image for the project.

This image shows the rotated resized intel photo overlaid on the Google earth image with red arrows indicating the taxiway-modern-day-roads used as sizing and rotating reference points:

***MaskRider*** · March 28th, 2015, 09:17

Here bis what the overlay looks like in GoogleEarth- I drew a slight yellow line around it:

The runway polygons against the modern day landscape

That's about it.

MR

***MaskRider*** · March 28th, 2015, 09:42

BTW When I refer ti the "intel photo" I am referring to the image Dave posted a bit earlier in this thread. This one. I changed it to a grey-scale image.

MR

***MaskRider*** · March 28th, 2015, 09:47

Originally Posted by dvslats

Seriously though, the map from East Indies Camp Archives is the key. I had never seen that one.
Put another notch in the pistol grip.

Now I have to go there in CFS2 and see what it looks like.

Good Work,
Dave

Yes, indeed, that map was the key to the magic kingdom for sure. Funny little example how following the wrong lead led to a good result.

I'm thinking I might put the Langoan project on hold and do Limboeng instead- along with the Makassar-Mandai airfield.

Too many choices!

Thanks Dave. That was a fun one!

MR

**Blood_Hawk23** · March 28th, 2015, 10:35

Originally Posted by Fibber

...you guys are better at the mechanics of this but this is just s thought. Is there anyway to make a transparency of DVSLATS "Limbo" and overlay it on the present photos that we have to give a almost perfect fit for placement?

Yes there is.

I have an example here in my Map Coord Converter Worksheets. http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...id=49&id=19141

Its started in the Pusan Perimiter project. Its not hard.

**Fibber** · March 28th, 2015, 11:52

.forgot to respond. That is the waterway that I referenced earlier. I found it at another locator site though, not the standard oogle

. Here is what I found it by; http://www.maplandia.com/indonesia/s.../luwu/limbong/

**Fibber** · March 28th, 2015, 13:33

....for your new fields, here is a site with some mission info. http://www.40thbombgroup.org/Archive...thBG_Feb45.pdf

Site refers to strike photos, will try to see if they can be open sourced located.

***Worthless*** · March 28th, 2015, 15:07

I'd like to say that I've just finished reading this thread and found it very interesting. Perhaps the name should be changed from "Weird CTD issue" to something that better describes what is contained here. "The great PTO airfield hunt" or something more descriptive. Personally, I've archived it for my own reflection, as my memory isn't what it used to be and I'm sure I will need to refer to it again. Thanks to all!

**Fibber** · March 28th, 2015, 15:26

....but I did find this layout for Mingaladon. http://www.warbirdforum.com/minglado.htm

***MaskRider*** · March 28th, 2015, 18:34

Originally Posted by Fibber

....for your new fields, here is a site with some mission info. http://www.40thbombgroup.org/Archive...thBG_Feb45.pdf

Site refers to strike photos, will try to see if they can be open sourced located.

Thanks for all the help Fibber. Its really appreciated. I decided to take the day off today. The last couple of days of sleuthing around the PTO wore me out. So I headed up into the back country of east San Diego county and just chilled out! Didn't stumble across any abandoned airfields.

Thanks for the links. I will have a nice leisurely look at everything later on tonight.

MR

***MaskRider*** · March 28th, 2015, 18:37

Originally Posted by Blood_Hawk23

Yes there is.

I have an example here in my Map Coord Converter Worksheets. http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...id=49&id=19141

Its started in the Pusan Perimiter project. Its not hard.

Blood_Hawk23, I will enjoy looking though it. Thank you!

MR

***MaskRider*** · March 28th, 2015, 18:40

Originally Posted by Worthless

...my memory isn't what it used to be and I'm sure I will need to refer to it again. Thanks to all!

Don't feel like the Lone Ranger WRT to that!

Glad you enjoyed the thread. It really has sorta roamed far and wide hasn't it?

MR

**Fibber** · March 28th, 2015, 20:34

"So I headed up into the back country of east San Diego county and just chilled out!"? That wouldn't be the Temecula Valley wine country would it?

Nice place to chill out while sampling some local berry juice.

BH... nice converter. I did however find some on-line that will do that conversion, like this one http://latlongconverter.com/

There are about three that were promising. I did use the one from the landasia site.

***UncleTgt*** · March 29th, 2015, 03:55

Re:- Mingaladon layout - cracking find Fibber

**dvslats** · April 4th, 2015, 20:56

Hello Mr. MR,

I went through my external HD to see if the original pdf file was still in it where the Limboeng picture came from.
No joy...but there was another screen capture from the pdf file in question.
Its of Mandai Sulawesi. I had saved a link to it "http://beeldbank.nationaalarchief.nl/viewer/schaduwarchief/2.22.21/688/0001"
but now it comes up as a 404 not found.

So here's a link to my original capture.

Though you may want to store it in your archives.

I need another Duff now...

Dave