A Missing Plane

by Susan Sheehan

An in-depth account of the discovery of a crashed American bomber missing for thirty-eight years and the painstaking identification of the plane's passengers

Genres: History

Hardcover

Published October 1, 1986

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

On March 22, 1944, Army Air Force B-24 bomber 42-41081 left Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea bound for Nadzab air base, PNG some 200 miles to the north and east. On this trip, the plane was not on a bombing run in support of the World War II effort in East Asia. Rather it carried a crew of three and nineteen passengers, some returning from leave, others on their way to their first combat bomber assignment in the Pacific after graduating from flight school, a few hopping a ride on their long trip home at the end of the military service. 42-41081 never arrived in Nadzab. On March 22 it was lost - where, when and how, a mystery. My uncle Emory Young was onboard 42-41081. Thirty-nine years he/they/the plane was found.


Picture of 42-41081 over the Pacific before it crashed

A Missing Plane chronicles in precise and at times exhausting detail the discovery of 42-41081, the collection of the crews remains, and their subsequent identification. 42-41081 lay smashed into the mountainside of Mount Thumb, Papua New Guinea for thirty-nine years before being sited by local villagers two days walk into the jungle in 1982. Bruce Hoy who ran a private Work War II museum in Papua New Guinea contacted the Army Central Identification Lab (CIL) in Hawaii and and informed them of the find. The CIL dispatched a team to the site to collect any remains. After almost four decades in the jungle of Mount Thumb, the jungle had claimed most of the men, plane and the things it carried. Over eight days in April 1982, the CIL recovered roughly 1000 bits of bone and assorted teeth of a possible 5236 had they discovered complete skeletons for even man. They also recovered a few personal effects. These were carefully packaged and set to specialist Tadao Furue at the CIL’s base in Hawaii for identification.

The heart of the A Missing Plane is the fascinating account of the careful work of Furue in identifying each man from the commingled and fragmentary remains recovered in Guinea. At this time, before modern spectroscopy and DNA identification, Furue relied solely on physically assessing bone structure, density, growth plates and other clues to separate the jig saw puzzle of remains into likely individuals. Individual teeth were compared to the sparse dental records to also aid in identification. Aside from some math used to calculate the presumed height and build of each man from his bone fragments, the only “technology” Furue employed was holding bones up to projections of photos of some of the dead men on a wall to help “confirm” a suspected match. After eight long months of painstaking analysis, Furue was able to identify with confidence the individual remains of all twenty-two men aboard 42-41081, enabling the remains to be returned to their families for burial thirty-nine year after they were first notified their loved ones were missing and presumed dead. (Any commingled remains or remains that cannot be positively identified are required by military law to be buried in a military cemetery vs returned to family.) A one word summary of this chapter might read - compassion. Furue is certainly compassionate in his work to identify each man. The Army is equally compassionate in its efforts to find and notify each family. Sheehan's account is very compassionate.


Chicago Tribune article on return of my uncle Emory Young's remains in 1983

The last half of A Missing Plane is a detailed account the life of 42-41081’s pilot Robert Allred from his birth until the crash, and that of his family and surviving wife before during and after he was lost. This section concludes with Allred’s burial in the National Memorial Center for the Pacific in Hawaii on May 1984. Other families are mentioned in passing. There’s also a brief history of the B-24, and of Army Air Force operations in Papua New Guinea. This part of the book (Section III) is interesting, but the stars of A Missing Plane are the CIL and in particular Furue. When they exit the stage, my interest waned. I skip-read the last half of the book.

A final comment: This book would have benefited greatly from more diagrams (there are only a few) and pictures (there are none) to illustrate the complexity of the CIL's task. I find it sad that neither the book nor a google search can produce a image of Tadao Furue who was so instrumental in returning the remains thousands of soldiers lost to World War II and Vietnam to the families.

Four stars. If you’re into World War II histories or forensic mysteries, you’ll find alot to like here. On my buy, borrow skip scale, this was a buy for me because of my genealogical connection to the story. For others, more of a borrow.

Coda:

Some surprising facts found in A Missing Plane:

1. Papua New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse country in the world. The book states that over 700 different languages are spoken within the country’s borders. Ethnologue states there are 839 living languages spoken in the country.

2. Their are no roads (auto or rail) connecting major cities in Papua New Guinea. The country is simply too mountainous to allow ground transport over distance. The majority of transport from place to place is via air or ship. At the time of the books writing there were 350 registered airports in Papua New Guinea.

3. Flying in Papua New Guinea is dangerous due to the terrain and changeable weather. 450 planes were lost to the jungles of Papua New Guinea during World War II. 42-41081 is one of the few that's been found. The rest lay still hidden in the jungle.

5. Dental care in the 1940’s was apparently very poor. Of the twenty two men aboard 42-41081, all Americans, dental records showed that at least five (roughly a quarter) had between 7 and 10 teeth extracted due to decay before they were 25 years of age.

[Joy Kidney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part I tells about bird hunters on Papua New Guinea finding remains of a large plane about 1980, and about Bruce Hoy--the first curator of the Aviation Maritime and War Branch of the National Museum and Art Gallery of Papua New Guinea--who was obsessed with finding remains of about 350 aircraft downed there between 1942 and 1945.

Hoy, who helped me with research about the loss of Dale Wilson's B-25 there in late 1943, collected MACRs (Missing Air Crew Reports) and connected with the Central Identification Lab based in Hawaii, formed to ID Vietnam war casualties until relations soured with Vietnam. Focus turned to WWII war dead.

A team, including the two bird hunters, located and identified the B-24, mapping out an area to begin to identify the human remains and artifacts with X-numbers.

Part II details the fascinating but tedious forensic work of identifying the 22 men in 1982 who were aboard the B-24, including the pilot, Robert Allred, who was from Des Moines.

Part III was Allred's story. He'd married and finished at Des Moines College of Law when he joined the AAF in 1942, sent to the 22nd Bombardment Group in New Guinea. The plane was ferrying a new-in-country B-25 crew from Port Moresby to Nadzab when lost in March 1944.

I learned about this book from my son's second and third grade teacher, Millie LeCroy. She and her twin sister had sung at the Wedding of Bob and Juanita Allred in 1938. Juanita remarried in 1948, to a classmate of Millie and her sister. (Millie's husband, Don LeCroy, flew 53 B-25 missions in New Guinea.)

The book was valuable research to try to learn what had happened to my mother's brother, Dale Wilson, who was lost on a B-25 with five others in 1943. Correspondence with Curator Bruce Hoy was especially helpful.

This book is so valuable historically, but also such a poignant human story.

[Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had read this book previously and when cleaning my bookcase recently found it once again and just knew it needed a reread. it was and is still an excellent read. A B-24 flying from Port Moresby to Nazdab crashes in the mountains of New Guinea on March 22 of 1944. Thirty eight years later in April of 1982 the plane is discovered and the process of locating the remains of the 22 persons aboard the aircraft begins. The remains are gathered and shipped to Hawaii for identification. Through a rigorous process, all 22 people on the aircraft are subsequently identified. The process of finding the next of kin and notifying them begins. Old memories are brought to the surface. Wives who have remarried are forced to face the difficult task of the burial of their former loved ones. Other family members finally come to know how their sons, brothers died. This book is well worth the read.

[Cherie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting... I even went to the Punch Bowl Cemetary to pay my respects

[Tom Ryerson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book on June 23rd 2014 on the recommendation of a family member, and then a week later they admitted they had recommended me the wrong book. So it sat on my shelves for over ten years until last week when I was looking for something to read, I thought I'll finally give this a go. I'm an organized person, and I love the way the book is organized into three separate and definite sections; Recovery, Identification, and Pilot. The first section is the discovery and reclamation of the wreck in the jungle in 1982, while the second section painstakingly describes how the remains of the 22 men aboard the plane were identified, and the last part is my favourite, the life of the pilot and his wife in the 1930's and 1940's. I actually shed some tears at the conclusion of the book. This is a very detailed and well written tome, and the mystery really kept me wanting to read on. Highly recommended to all readers, it will really open your eyes to the behind the scenes details of cases such as these.