A World War II Navy bomber and flight crew missing in action for nearly 72 years were found near the Pacific Island nation of Palau, thanks to a project launched in 2012 to search for MIA aircraft and crew members.
The TBM-1C Avenger is 85 feet under water. It went down in July 1944, with one of the three crew members reportedly bailing out.
“The importance of our mission is reinforced with each new discovery of a missing aircraft," said Eric Terrill, a University of California San Diego oceanographer, in a
Project RECOVER news release. “But this is more than reconnecting with history; it's about locating the missing to enable the U.S. government to bring them home for a proper burial.”
The lagoon waters, coral reefs, and mangrove forests of the Palau islands are thought to conceal several dozen U.S. aircraft and the remains of as many as 80 U.S. airmen, the project believes.
Capturing Palau from Japan had the highest death toll of any amphibious assault in U.S. military history, with about 2,300 people killed and 8,400 wounded, reported
UPI.
Project RECOVER is a partnership between the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, and the BentProp Project.
The group interviewed veterans, studied old photographs, and conducted research at the National Archives to determine an approximate location of the downed Avenger,
CNN reported. Then they used an underwater robot equipped with sonar to comb the seafloor.
"We essentially mow the lawn with this device," Terril said.
After two months of scanning, the wreck was found, and the team will turn its discovery over to the U.S. government to identify the remains, using such evidence as dog tags, dental records and DNA.
“The plane had a number of Japanese targets that it was focused on in World War II, and was hit by anti-aircraft fire, and then crashed within the lagoon a few miles over shore from the target that it was going after," Terrill told
Fox News.
The Avenger is the sixth aircraft located by the project, said UPI.
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