Wed, Feb 19, 2020
Associated With 7 U.S. Servicemen Lost In 1944
Truk Lagoon in Micronesia ... now known as Chuuk Lagoon ... is continuing to give up its secrets. Project Recover, which is a group dedicated to identifying and where possible repatriating remains of Americans missing in action, has discovered three U.S. aircraft which went down during Operation Hailstone in February, 1944 that are associated with seven U.S. servicemen who had been listed as Missing in Action.
Fox News reports that the aircraft are two SBD-5 Dauntless dive bombers and a TBM/F-1 Avenger which engaged Japanese forces during the operation February 17-18, 1944. The aircraft were among the approximately 30 planes that were lost during the operation. Officials estimate that 12 went down in the lagoon.
The search for the airplanes involved four expeditions to the lagoon in 2018 and 2019. Underwater drones searched the sea bed at depths of up to 215 feet, and spotted debris from the airplanes.
“After completing archeological surveys of the crash sites in December 2019, the team is now assembling reports for review by the U.S. government to potentially set into motion a process for recovering and identifying the remains of up to seven crew members associated with these aircraft,” Andrew Pietruszka, an underwater archaeologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Project Recover’s lead archaeologist, said in a statement obtained by Fox News.
Information about the sites will be shared with the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) and the government of the Federated States of Micronesia.
(Image from file)
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