Location
Located at But along the coast.

Japanese built airfield running east to west, parallel to the coast. Dagua (But East) was located to the east a few minutes flying away. The Japanese referred to this airfield as 'But West'. Allied referred to this airfield as 'But Drome'.

Construction
Construction began on February 6, 1943, and by the end of the month a single runway of hard earth and sand was built, 1,200 x 80 meters, without any additional facilities. Later, the strip was expanded to 5,200' runway (as of October 19, 1943). With 29 revetments, northern bomber dispersal area had 17 bomber revetments, closest to the sea. A southern bomber dispersal area had 12 revetments. The area also had 8 heavy and 8 light AA, and two searchlight batteries.

Units based at But
26th Sentai (Ki-51) November 1943 - January 27, 1944
74th Air Company

American Missions Against But
(USAAF 5th AF) May 9, 1943 - August 25, 1944

Allied Attacks & Occupation
The airfield was neutralized and bypassed by the USAAF 5th AF and RAAF. Australian troops reached the area in April of 1945. They noted the following of wrecks at the strip: 8 (6) Dinah, 1 Helen, 21 (22) Lilys, 3 Sally, 10 Sonias. US Army ATIU also visited the strip, and noted slightly different wreck numbers (in parentheses above). Thanks to Richard Dunn for this reference. An Australian Army photograph (AWM 090412) taken April 2, 1945 shows a Sonia with manufacture number 946? visible on the left spat.

Scrapping in the 1950's
After the war, it was abandoned as an airfield. Remains of trucks, motorcycles, airfield gear and other relics littered the area. Emil Glaus, a Swiss expatriate and Wewak resident won the government licence for wartime scrap for Wewak , and worked in the area exhaustively in the 1950's, methodically melting down war remains, in addition to his coastal shipping business. He died in in 1960's, and villagers he worked with sunk his pontoon work barges as a memorial to him in the vicinity of But. When he got to But, he only partially scrapped the airfield.

Discoveries & Recoveries
Once, a cache of experimental 40mm case less ammunition was discovered, according to Charles Darby. In the late 1980 - early 1990's Australian expatriate, Tim Mathews recovered several Japanese aircraft radial engine to Australia, with the hopes of reselling them. They are in storage in Australia, and unsold.

Today
The airfield has been abandoned since the war, but the rectangle of the runway is still clearly visible, parallel to the road form Wewak to Aitape.  Several square "U" shaped revetments are visible on the south side of the strip and bomb craters in the area.  A pile of scrap collected by Emil Klaus is located at the eastern edge of the strip, consisting of engines, aircraft bits and landing gear and the remains of several motorcycles.

Phil Bradley reports:
"But has mostly bits and pieces of aircraft only. When I was there we nearly got hacked to bits and pieces by locals who thought we were trespassing and came at us with bush knives. Luckily my colleague (Jimmy Yapi, a local) knows everybody in PNG and it turned out one of his 'sisters bilong mi' had married a local guy so everyone became 'nambawan friends.' "

Ki-51 Sonia
Partially scrapped, center section only

Ki-51 Sonia
Partially scrapped, center section only

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Last Updated
October 22, 2009

September 30, 1943

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