Vilu War Museum

About 15 kilometres west of Honiara along the coast road, the Vilu War Museum is an open-air collection of World War II aircraft, artillery, and vehicles left to rust and coral in the tropical vegetation. The centrepiece is the aircraft collection — a mix of American and Japanese planes from the Guadalcanal campaign, some remarkably intact, others reduced to recognizable fragments.

Getting there requires a taxi or hire car — about 30–40 minutes from central Honiara. The site is maintained by a local family and there is a small entrance fee. It is an unusual, atmospheric place: the hardware of a world war slowly being absorbed by the jungle. More intimate than a conventional museum, and more affecting for it.

things to do museum sight
A story
Most of the aircraft at Vilu are American — SBD Dauntless dive bombers, TBF Avengers, a P-38 Lightning — because the Americans won. But there is also a remarkably intact Japanese Zero, one of the best surviving examples of the aircraft that made Japanese air power so feared in 1941 and 1942. It sits in the jungle undergrowth as though it simply landed and was never retrieved.

Other places in Things to Do