Part Of Crew Lost In 1942 Crash

The AT-7 went down in 1942. The wreckage wasn't discovered until 1947. Now, one of the crew members aboard that military navigational trainer has apparently been found -- frozen in ice on California's Mount Mendel Glacier. The question now is, who was this airman?

The body was discovered in the Sequoia National Park recently by two climbers at approximately 13,000 feet.

"They were hiking, ice climbing... it's a pretty popular ice climbing route in (Kings Canyon) and what they noticed was the head and shoulder and a part of an arm of a person at the base of the glacier that had melted out over the course of this summer," National Park Service spokeswoman Alexandra Picavet told KFSN-TV. "We got the report of a person wearing a parachute with a patch that said US Army Corp. There was no Air Force in 1942... that didn't come until 1947, or after World War II."

In 1947, hikers on the glacier found part of the missing aircraft along with four bodies. No one knew a fifth soul was on board.

Tuesday, two US Park Police officers and an archeologist climbed to the crash site to examine the body. Authorities believe the rest of the aircraft lies under the glacier where the body was found. Park officials hoped to chisel the body out of the ice on Wednesday and perhaps find on it some form of identification.

FMI: www.nps.gov/seki