News-Info-Alerts

Re: The Neverending Search

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: November 11, 2002

"Veteran’s mission A long search for long-lost World War II bomber

By BRIAN UZDAVINIS Staff Writer, (856) 794-5113

VINELAND - In his hands, Sparky Corradina holds an aging file he believes shows the location of 11 missing airmen whose bomber crashed in the Himalayas during World War II.

To this day, the wreck has not been recovered.

"It's stamped 'Pending,'" the Vineland resident says of the 60-year-old document. "And it's still pending."

Corradina wants to change that.

In 1944, a B-29 called the Missouri Queen was returning to base with three other bombers from a run over Mukden, Manchuria, when its commander, Capt. Gilbert Johnson, radioed the others that he was running low on fuel and would have to land at a nearby airfield.

This, the last contact made with the plane, occurred at 3:38 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1944, near Tehsien, China, at 37 degrees 29 minutes north latitude and 116 degrees 20 minutes east longitude.

The Graves Registration Unit, which investigated numerous crash sites to locate the remains of missing airmen toward the end of the war, called off its search for the Missouri Queen in the mid-1940s.

Corradina's copy of the investigative unit's file for the plane, No. 1785, shows the Missouri Queen crashing into a mountain at 36 degrees 7 minutes north latitude, 112 degrees 39 minutes east longitude.

But "political unrest in China indicates that investigations cannot be carried out at the scene of the crash," reads an entry dated March 1945 - a time when China was enduring a civil war.

"Somebody had to have found the remains - the biggest thing now is time," Corradina says. "The Chinese were very good about burying the airmen and, after the war was over, showing the Graves Registration where they were buried ... but those people have got to be up in their 80s now."

Corradina, 53, is a Vietnam War veteran who maintains a Web site and serves as historian for his father's 40th Bomb Group, a B-29 group attached to the 58th Bomb Wing of the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II.

His interest in the Missouri Queen - one of the Wing's 160 bombers - stems from a correspondence with the plane's original pilot, whose spot was being filled during the fateful mission by a substitute learning the flight routes.

"He's been trying to find out for 58 years if anyone's found the remains of his buddies," Corradina says. "That's what really got me interested in this plane - plus, I was always curious as to why it was never found because it was so close."

And then a woman contacted him.

"She was inquiring about anyone who might know about her uncle who was on this plane," Corradina says. "I guess the families were just told that they were missing in action and that's it."

So Corradina forwarded a copy of the papers to the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, or CILHI, a special unit that assists the Department of Defense in recovering soldiers' remains and forensics identification.

"The strange thing is I've been in contact with them for two months now and they weren't able to get this document," Corradina says of the file. "And the ironic thing is, I got it from a Chinese historian."

The missing

The Missouri Queen was one of 600 planes that fell from the sky while flying missions "over the hump" - the airmen's nickname for crossing the Himalayas - to attack the Japanese in the China-Burma-India Theater.

Few have been recovered.

"It will require a search," says Larry Greer, spokesman for the POW/MIA Office of the U.S. Department of Defense. "Since 50 years or more have ensued, the site will not be precisely where they think it was - if it is, I think we'll all be surprised."

Crash sites are scavenged, ravaged and pushed around by rivers, flooding and erosion. And locating the remains, if they're buried, requires finding people in the area who might know of the graves.

Greer speaks of the many Vietnam War veterans who regularly contact his office and say they know exactly where their friends fell.

"Even though we discourage it, some veterans will go over there on their own," he says. "They'll go to a certain spot on a certain battlefield and the battlefield is not there - it's changed, overgrown."

And then there are the risks.

"Today, even the CILHI people will tell you there are certain parts of certain countries they can't get into because of unrest, because of guerrilla operations," Greer says. "It's not a real big problem, but there are pockets here and there that we have to avoid to keep our people from being killed."

Nearly 90,000 American military personnel remain missing since World War II - which accounts for 78,000 of those missing. There are 8,100 missing from the Korean War, 1,900 from the Vietnam War, 130 from the Cold War and one airman from the Gulf War.

"It's building a detective case," Greer says. "Even though you may think your initial report is very clear and has what you need, for the most part, there's a lot more information that has to be gathered."

The search

"It's a huge, huge operation to plan for, to train and to conduct the actual recovery," CILHI Deputy Director Johnnie Webb says.

CILHI, which has recovered the remains of more than 1,000 soldiers since 1973, was based in Thailand during the Vietnam War before it relocated to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii in 1976 - when it broadened its searches to include all wars since World War II.

The lab employs about 250 military and civilian personnel - including archaeologists, forensic anthropologists and other experts - and has 18 search-and-recovery teams. Each team conducts about four missions a year.

One of CILHI's teams returned last month from Tibet, where it recovered a C-46 cargo plane that crashed decades ago with four men on board while going over the hump. The crash site was at 16,000 feet.

Training for the recovery mission began last spring, when the CILHI team started preparing for the low temperatures and thin air at 14,000 feet atop Moana Kia on the island of Hawaii, Webb says.

"Then we sent them to Alaska to train with folks from the Northern Warfare Training Center to do mountain training and training in ice and snow," Webb says.

"And then we had a couple of meetings with the Chinese to work out the logistical support, because there was no opportunity to get a helicopter in there."

The 12-member team first drove toward the crash site and then used packhorses. It finally had to walk where the horses could not and, ultimately, it recovered the remains of the C-46 crew.

Webb says he isn't familiar with the details of the Missouri Queen, "but in this particular case, it is something we would want to discuss with (Chinese officials) to see what our options are and if they have any information on the site."

Webb says CILHI has not conducted many missions in that particular area, but with the improving diplomatic relations, "I think the numbers will increase."

The waiting

"I'm not too confident," Corradina says.

He mentions the Chinese historian from whom he obtained the papers concerning the Missouri Queen. The man is an author who first contacted Corradina while researching a book he was writing on prisoners of war from the Mukden area.

Corradina put him in touch with one. So when the author heard of Corradina's difficulties with the Missouri Queen, he offered to visit the crash site himself for $2,000 to cover his expenses.

Corradina says, when he wrote to CILHI of the offer, the lab immediately responded "and said please don't do that, we have special people who are trained in the field."

The Department of Defense's Greer says the government tries to discourage American citizens from negotiating with foreigners in such cases.

"When they do that, we often find that it gets sticky," Greer says. "The Chinese government is very cooperative, has been, on World War II recoveries like this one - so I don't doubt that CILHI can work this very well."

It might seem as though the government isn't moving quickly enough, Greer adds, "but we want to do it right."

Corradina mentions the $2,000 and says the 58th Bomb Wing's next reunion is in September. They'll be taking up a collection.

To e-mail Brian Uzdavinis at The Press: BUzdavinis@pressofac.com"