News-Info-Alerts

Re: WW II Remains Recovered in Himalays

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: September 29, 2002

"Remains of Lost Fliers Recovered on Himalayan Mountain Ridge Headed Home
By Ted Anthony Associated Press Writer

BEIJING (AP) - After six decades on a lonely Himalayan mountainside, the remains of four World War II American fliers were on their way home Monday, retrieved by a joint U.S.-China search team from the wreckage of a downed cargo plane in eastern Tibet.

The airmen, who have not been conclusively identified, crashed into a meadow 15,650 feet high on a mountain near the Tibetan village of Langko in March 1944, according to searchers from the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii. All four died on impact, the military says.

Their remains were retrieved from the plateau during a two-month operation conducted with Chinese searchers during the summer. Another crash site, several mountains away, was identified and its remains tagged during the trip for future retrieval.

"The mission itself was a complete success," U.S. Army Capt. Daniel N. Rouse, the team's leader, said a news conference. "It's like winning the jackpot, getting up there and finding these."

The C-46, a transport plane pressurized for high-altitude wartime runs, crashed during a return trip along the "hump route," a supply run from India to the Chinese wartime capital of Kunming that ferried goods to China-based U.S. forces and Chinese Nationalist government forces battling the Japanese.

The aircraft's wings were sheared off and found nearby, and the fuselage was damaged but recognizable, salvagers said. Its landing gear was still up when found, and thick clouds were visible across that level of the mountain.

"They probably got lost, ran out of fuel and simply hit the mountain," said James T. Pokines, the search team's anthropologist.

That C-46 was one of more than 500 U.S. planes believed to have crashed over the Himalayan mountains during World War II. More than 1,000 U.S. airmen are believed to have perished in such crashes along what became known as the "Aluminum Trail" for its many lost planes.

Neither the Chinese nor the American government knew of the plane's location until 2000, when two locals - a farmer and a woman, both in their 80s - got word to regional authorities about the site, which had been common knowledge in the area for decades.

"I assume all the locals knew about it, probably visited it once or twice in their lives to pick over it," Pokines said. "We know that people visited the site and carried off whatever was useful to them."

The airmen's remains arrived in Beijing Saturday under the team's care and are being stored in a U.S. Embassy compound. They leave Thursday for the United States, where they will be examined and tested for DNA matches to produce positive identification.

The U.S. search team trained for the trip for weeks, ascending Hawaiian and Alaskan mountains to prepare for the grueling, high-altitude Tibetan terrain. While in Tibet, they faced rain, hail and thin air during the salvage operation, which they rushed to complete before winter snows began.

The second site high above the Tibetan village of Damnyu, about 60 miles from Langko, is even more remote. It was discovered in 1999 by a pair of hunters, and the Chinese government informed Washington the following year, said Tonga, the Tibetan official in charge of salvage operations.

He said the memories of witnesses may be sketchy after so long. "Remember," he said, "this story is almost 60 years old."

© 2002, Media General Inc. "