News-Info-Alerts

Re: Search for WW II Crash Sites Expands

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 03, 2002

"Search for WWII crash sites will extend to Himalayas

By Wayne Specht, Stars and StripesPacific edition


Locating two World War II crash sites in China’s Tibetan Himalayan range will take a 14-man team from the Army’s Central Identification Laboratory over some of Earth’s toughest terrain.

CILHI officials in Hawaii said the group is to arrive in eastern China on Aug. 9 to seek answers about what happened to four people aboard a C-46 transport that crashed in March 1944.

The aircraft was reported missing on a flight from Kunming, China, to its base in India. CILHI officials believe the pilots became lost and ran out of gas before crashing. The wreckage fell into a ravine in front of a small cave on a mountain slope.

Staff Sgt. Sebastian Harris, with CILHI in Hawaii, said the team also will search a second crash site involving a C-46. “Anything they find they will bring back,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of information about that second crash, so it will be an investigative effort to put eyes on the ground.”

The C-46 gained fame flying from India over the Himalayas into China, a flight plan known as the “Hump,” beginning in 1943. Allies were forced to take this dangerous route when Japan sealed China’s coast and captured Burma.

Hump pilots had to fly 500 miles over 15,000-foot mountain ranges. The transports almost always carried their maximum gross weight, often in icing conditions, monsoons or severe turbulence.

The crash sites are about 15,500 feet and 16,200 feet above sea level. The team is to spend two months on site — by far among the lab’s most challenging mission to date, said CILHI spokeswoman Ginger Couden.

Army Capt. Daniel Rouse and Sgt. 1st Class Sean Bendele will lead the team, assembled specially for the mission. It’s been training extensively in Hawaii and Alaska and will continue to do so until leaving for China, Couden said, to prepare for the tough terrain and high altitudes.

Also on the team: anthropologist James Pokines, Mortuary Affairs Specialists Staff Sgt. Thomas Woods and Sgt. Michael Harris. They’ll be joined by several augmentees from units around the world, including three mountaineering specialists, a medic, one doctor, two linguists and representatives from both U.S. and Chinese embassies.

Getting there may be more than half the fun. Team members will travel on rugged roads in four-wheel-drive vehicles, cross rivers via ferries and foot and ride horseback for days before reaching the base of the mountain near the first C-46 crash site.

Then the team must hike the mountain two hours each way, daily, to reach the site. “They will be living in three-person tents,” Harris said.

That may be the easy part. To reach the second crash site, each team member must hike four days across a glacier, carrying an 80-lb. rucksack. The team also will be responsible for transporting 5,000 pounds of excavation equipment.

Rouse led the pre-trek conditioning program, which included altitude training on Hawaii’s 14,000-foot Mauna Kea and glacier and mountaineering training at Alaska’s Northern Warfare Training Center.

Strenuous five-day-a-week physical training included weights and cardio exercises. Twice weekly the team has marched for two hours up Oahu’s mountain roads, carrying rucksacks of equipment.

It’s an “extraordinary privilege,” said mission photographer Cpl. Ricardo Morales, to be part of a team traveling to terrain few have seen to seek servicemembers who likely gave their lives.

“As a photographer, shooting the landscapes of the Himalayas from an elevation of 16,000 feet and documenting this difficult recovery mission is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said. 

© 2002 Stars and Stripes"