News-Info-Alerts

Re: WW II Flier Remains Sought in Tibet

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 17, 2002

"Americans arrive in Tibet seeking bodies of World War II fliers

BEIJING - A U.S. Army team has arrived in eastern Tibet to search for remains of fliers aboard two American planes that went down during World War II, the U.S. Embassy said Friday.


The mission is expected to last two months, the embassy said in a statement.

One crash site is at 15,500 feet (4,700 meters) on the Tibetan plateau and the other is at 16,200 feet (4,900 meters), according to information released earlier by the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.

Both aircraft were C-46 cargo planes. During the war, thousands of Allied flights flew over the region carrying weapons and supplies from India to the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming — the country's wartime capital.

The Chinese government reported the locations of the two crash sites in 2000, according to the Army laboratory.

One of the planes disappeared in March, 1944, with four people aboard en route home to its base in Sookerating in India, the embassy said. It said the identity and number of people aboard the other flight is unknown.

Officials of the laboratory said the members of the crew sent to Tibet underwent special high-altitude training in Hawaii and Alaska.

Copyright © 2002 The Associated Press"