www.DarbyRangers.Com | Follow Me
Our POWs & MIAs in God's Hands
The Search Continues even today...
  Honorable men will never forget their lost brothers in-arms who
perished to unknown fates so that we may be free to live...
 |
20 May 2001
Grave of WWII Bomber Pilot Located in Sicily
(From The Associated Press)
The grave of a Minnesota pilot has been found in a small-town cemetary in Sicily nearly 58 years after Lt. Theodore Thompson's dive bomber slammed into a hillside during WWII.
The grave tended by the townspeople who buried him just a mile from the crash site, is marked with a flag and a cross bearing his name.
The crash site and grave were located this year by Bryan Moon and his son, Chris, of the small self-funded, not-for-profit organization MIA Hunters, based in Shakopee Minnesota.
8 February 2001
_______________________________________________________________
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE PRESS RELEASE
|
No. 058-01
|
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
|
February 8, 2001
|
CHINA PROVIDES WORLD WAR II U. S. AIRCRAFT CRASH SITES
The Department of Defense announced today that it has received preliminary information from the Peoples Republic of China on two US World War II aircraft crashes in Tibet.
During his delegation's meeting with Chinese officials in fall 2000, Robert L. Jones, the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for POW/Missing Personnel Affairs, was informed by the Chinese that they were developing more information regarding these crashes. Last month, Chinese officials forwarded updated information through the US Embassy to the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO).
The first of the two crash sites in Milin County, Lang Gong Region, may be that of a US C-46, lost on March 27, 1944, with a crew of four aboard. It was on a flight from Kunming, China to Scokarating, India. The names of the crew are among those listed as missing in action. Attempts to locate their families are now underway.
Information on the second aircraft is still under development by the US Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii (CILHI). Specialists at CILHI will seek to verify, from World War II records, more information that might match the known mission profiles of missing US aircraft. DPMO will seek Chinese approval to send a CILHI survey team to the two sites to gather information that may lead to a full-scale excavation.
The Chinese government has previously provided generous assistance to the United States in recovery operations of World War II aircraft. In 1994, they notified the United States of a crash site discovered on Tibet's Ruo Guo Glacier from which CILHI specialists recovered and identified five remains of American crew members. Also, during 1997-99, the Chinese assisted US specialists in the recovery of American remains from a World War II B-24 bomber crash site in southern China. All ten of those crew members have been identified, returned home and buried with full military honors.