Several team members attended a 1.5-day
training session on 19 and 20 January on operation of the Marine
Sonic "Sea Scan" side-scan sonar device. You
can read about the SSS training session here. In a spectacular
expression of support, Marine Sonic has donated one of their SSS devices
to the BentProp team!
We'll
be taking the side-scan sonar to Palau on the 2010
expedition, scheduled
for 18 February - 12 March. We hope to be able to do some extensive
underwater surveys in areas of interest - this time using far more
sophisticated, state-of-the-art
technology than we've been able to use to date. You'll be able to track
the 2010 expedition's progress by reading the daily
progress reports that we'll try to post while the team is in the field.
The week after the SSS training session, several
team members will spend about three days (28-29-30) at the National
Archives and Records
Administration
(NARA) research center in College Park, Maryland, reviewing photographic
and textual information related to the targets that we've selected
for 2010: a Corsair that crashed in the mountainous area southwest
of Ngeremeduu Bay (which we also sometimes call Ngatpang Bay), and
the (probably) underwater crash site of the fourth and final B-24 that
was shot down on a mission to Koror (we've now found and documented
the other three).
December
2009
On 12 December a
funeral service was held in Orlando, Florida for
2LT Jack
Arnett,
the pilot of B-24 '453, whose underwater crash site the BentProp
team located and identified in January 2004, after a 10-year search.
A portion of Arnett's cremated remains were buried during this service.
It's
anticipated that another
portion
of the remains will be buried in a service next spring, next to the
graves of Arnett's parents in Friendly, West Virginia. BentProp team
member
Mark Noah (who
is also founder of History
Flight) arranged to do a flyover
in his foundation's B-25H "Barbie III," and later took some
of the family members for a flight in that aircraft. Jack Arnett's
funeral was the fourth individual family ceremony held to date among
the eight men recovered from
the '453 crash site
by
JPAC. It is
now anticipated that the rest of the '453's crew members who went
down with the aircraft
will
be
interred at
a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery on 29 April 2010. Here's
where you can view some photos from the Arnett funeral.
November 2009
Here's
a dramatic
twist to a story that those
of you who've seen the documentary "Last
Flight Home" will recall. In the film, there are interviews
with family members of the crew of a TBM that was shot down on
Peleliu in September
1944, which we located and identified in 2003. The aircraft was
flown by Donald Baxter, and carried
crew members Wesley
Stuart and Arthur Miller. After
the war, only the Stuart family received remains recovered on Peleliu
- and although Wesley Stuart's mother promised to care for the
remains, she never truly believed that they were the remains of
her son. Following
a 2005 JPAC mission to the site that failed to recover remains
of any crew members, Mrs.Stuart's intuition was validated when
her daughter
Mary Ellen had the remains exhumed, and DNA testing confirmed that
the remains could not be those of Wesley. In April 2008, JPAC and
the Navy did a full honor-guard ceremony to retrieve the remains
and casket, which were flown to Hawaii for DNA identification.
In early October
2009, JPAC confirmed that the remains were identified as those
of Wesley's fellow crew member, Arthur Miller. BentProp team members
Pat Scannon, Derek Abbey, and Reid Joyce attended Arthur C. Miller's
full military funeralin Poughkeepsie, New York on 7 November.
Here's where
you can view some photographs from the funeral.
October 2009
Sgt.
Robert Stinson,
fellow crew member of Jimmie Doyle and Earl Yoh (see below), comes
home. Here's where you can read an article and view a video about the
late-October funeral for Robert Stinson, in Riverside, California:
May 2009 - Flip Colmer,
who took a ton of photographs at the Doyle and Yoh funerals (see below)
has assembled
them into a couple
of moving slide-show tributes to these
young men. Note that you should be able to watch the videos in full-screen
mode either by right-clicking the screen and selecting "Toggle
fullscreen"
or by clicking the little square icon in the lower right of the player
gizmo, next
to the volume
control.
Join us in remembering Jimmie Doyle
The voice on Jimmie's video, and the author of the song
and the lyrics, is Col. Mike Lembke, III Corps and Ft. Hood chaplain,
U.S. Army, who conducted Jimmie's service. The young Marine Captain sitting
with Tommy and Nancy at the graveside service is their son Casey, who
escorted his grandfather's remains home from JPAC in Honolulu..
Join us in remembering Earl Yoh
The song on Earl's video is the one selected by Earl's family
to be played at the funeral service. Earl was one of 13 siblings. The
two gentlemen in the front row at the graveside service are Earl's twin
brothers,
Gale
(left, who
received the flag) and Dale - the last surviving of Earl's siblings.
JPAC has reported
that their three recovery missions (in 2005, 2006, and
2008) to the underwater crash
site of B-24 '453 were a total success! They
recovered remains of all eight crewmembers who went
down with this aircraft
on 1 September 1944. Five of the crewmembers were positively identified,
but they have insufficient structural and DNA information
to
make positive identifications of the other three. JPAC knows who the
three are, they just can't tell which is which. So we understand that
there
will
be a group
service for those three, who will be buried together at Arlington National
Cemetery. When we have information about that group event at Arlington,
we'll post the information here.
On 25 April 2009, Jimmie Doyle,
the nose gunner on B-24 '453, was laid to rest in a full military
funeral in Lamesa, Texas. Many of you
may recall that BentProp team member Joe Maldangesang, who lives in
Koror, Palau,
named
one
of his sons
Doyle. One of the most moving parts of the funeral service was when
Tommy Doyle (Jimmie's son) read the following note from Joe:
"The other day, Doyle asked me, why is his name Doyle, so i told him
that during wwII, a very special man by the name of Jimmy Doyle, flew
to palau
on airplane to help defend Palau from Japanese and he died protecting
us, and he was a very special man, and because he was special to us
and we loved
him, mom and i decided to give his last name to you so although his
not with us anymore, you will carry his name and legacy until one day
when you
get married and have kids and then you can tell your kids the story
of your name. And by sharing the story of your name to your kids and
grankids, He
will never be forgotten and his legacy lives on with us forever."
On 9 May, Earl Yoh,
also a crewmember on B-24 '453, was laid to rest in a family service in
Van Wert, Ohio.
And now that Mark
Swank is home from Palau, he's begun submitting a series of
POW Site reports describing the land team's efforts in the vicinity
of "Police
Hill." Here's where you can read Mark's
reports.
During
World War II, many American airmen lost their lives in the western Pacific,
some in the western Caroline Islands, in what is presently known as The Republic
of Palau. The ultimate fate of hundreds of these men
remains a mystery today. For more than a half century, families and wingmen
of
airmen who were declared Missing In Action (MIA) have lived with a painful lack
of closure: they do not know exactly how and where their loved ones died. If
they
could have such knowledge it might not eliminate the pain of loss, but such knowledge
can
sometimes ease the emptiness and silence the nightmares.
The
only antidote for such painful lack of closure is information.
Unfortunately, the ocean and jungles don't give up information about long-lost
aircraft without a struggle. The ocean can bury an aircraft under sand and silt,
or gradually envelop it in a shrine of coral. The
jungle, similarly, reclaims a wreck over the years by letting it sink into the
mud and be slowly covered by each year's bounty of leaves and vines.
Pursuing
such mysteries, especially after the passage of so many decades, is not easy.
Random searching, above or below the ocean's surface, can be a colossal waste
of
time.
Directed searching using information gleaned from archives can at least provide
tentative boundaries for a search area - but not always the correct one. By
far
the most fruitful approach is winning the trust of people who live in an area,
who are then willing to come forth with information (and often express a willingness
to be guides) leading to sites that - to them - are just curiosities from a time
long beyond their recollection. Over several years, BentProp™
teams have tried all three approaches.
That's what we do: we search the waters and jungles of the western Pacific, in
what we hope are intelligent ways, for clues that may lead to the location and
identification of wreck sites and remains of men who gave their lives in defense
of America.
On the question of remains: we
share information with - and greatly admire the efforts of - JPAC
(the Joint POW/MIA Accounting
Command), which was recently formed by merging the 30-year-old U.S. Army
Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii (CILHI), and the 11-year-old Joint
Task Force
- Full Accounting. These are the folks who assemble and deploy teams to places
like Europe, Korea, and Vietnam - and recently, to Palau - to look for, recover,
and identify remains of American MIAs. When
we (the BentProp team) discover a site that may still contain remains, JPAC,
which
has
the
world's
largest forensic laboratory, has the resources (e.g., DNA analysis) to extend
the scientific analysis of the site and seek positive identification of remains.
We
also
notify relevant armed services' historical agencies, including the US Naval
Historical Center, the US Marine Historical Research Center and the
US Air Force
Historical Research Agency. We also inform air reunion groups that flew over
Palau, including the VMF (Marine Fighter Squadron)- 114, VMF-121, VMF-122, 494th
BG(H)
(Bombardment Group (Heavy)) of the 7th Army Air Force and the 307th BG(H) of
the 13th Army Air Force. Finally - and perhaps most importantly - we share information
with families of missing airmen, as the information is obtained and confirmed.
About
this Web site
The BentProp™ Web site is intended to make
available information that the various teams have accumulated
since Pat Scannon first realized that he was in this pursuit for the long haul.
Other team members have contributed both to the expeditions and to the information
contained here.
You can navigate through this site in a
couple of ways.
The
menu at the left side of each page is designed to give you direct
access to various collections of information that live on this site. Just
click the links, and explore the collections.
There
are also several fair-sizedchunks of pages that
tell a story - for example, there are detailed, individual reports on several
P-MAN expeditions. "Forward" and "Back"
buttons are provided at the top and bottom of pages within such chunks to allow
you to move in a straight line through the story, if you wish to follow the "flow."
Please
note that you can view the caption for any illustration
by simply touching the illustration with your cursor.
Use
the menu on the left to navigate to the destination of your choice.
December
2009 
The
jungle, similarly, reclaims a wreck over the years by letting it sink into the
mud and be slowly covered by each year's bounty of leaves and vines.