mia coast guard duck pilot honored by coast guard academy

[tom d. friedman]

the u.s. coast guard honored lt. john Pritchard recently & was inducted into the "hall of heros" by the u.s. coast guard academy for his daring rescue of downed b-17 aircrewmen in his Grumman j2f duck, only to go back, landing on the ice to rescue 1 additional crewman where the coast guard crew & passenger met their demise on take off. their remains are entombed in the wreckage & deep thick ice to this day. there has been a concerted effort to bring the mia coast guardsmen home since 2010. the plane may hold the last coast guard mia casualties of pritchard & his radioman petty officer 1st class Benjamin bottoms in ww2.

[TAdan]

Any word on how this years "Duck Hunt" went? I enjoyed Frozen in Time and followed last years search. Nice to see the crew honored, I hope JPAC can bring them home.

[CoastieJohn]

There was supposed to be a joint press release but I haven't seen anything. Bottom line....no luck yet. There maybe some other missions in the future to find these guys....at least I hope there is. I'm hoping the USCG also makes a similar formal recognition of the Duck's radioman, Ben Bottoms. CPL Loren Howarth was the Duck's pax when it crashed.

The mission started in Feb 2008, not 2010. The first flight over the crash site was the summer of 2008. A mission went up in 2009 with Air Pirates (ie...Gary Larkin) to locate a prospective target which we did via GPR. We went back up in 2010 with North South Polar to melt down to the located target. It turned out to be a cavern....no luck. Then another mission in 2012, 2013 and this past summer. JPAC didn't fully come into the picture till about 2013....the last two missions.

My opinion only.....there is a specialized sensor that can see straight down and out to the side. That would be helpful. Also another over flight by a certain sensorized aircraft. We're still hoping to find some photo's out there that may have been taken by a crewman on one of the over flights supplying the crashed PN9E or any other aircraft since. We know the Duck was supposedly seen in 1946/47 by an overflying CG PB-1G doing IIP flights.