Boston Globe article - Remains are lost in race for relics

[dred]

A worthy topic, but a shameful treatment of it by the "journalists" (using the term loosely) responsible for it. Infuriating.

[muddyboots]

Sooo... it seems to me that the MIA recovery team should post a notice that remains should be documented, as to where and when recovered, and sent to them.
Then they have the remains, or what was recoverable anyway, at no taxpayer expense, no bureaucratic process with indifferent countries to deal with, etc.
Then they do the DNA tests, and ship the remains to the families. The process has been greatly streamlined and remains have been recovered that otherwise would sit there or be lost.
The big thing, is that people can then be accounted for and listed as a certain KIA.
he!!, I'd even offer a reward to give people an incentive.
....But why be practical about it when you can make enemies instead of friends?

Because what you are describing would never happen. Forensic Archeology is a complex and time consuming task which absorbs man hours, cash, and lab time. You don't just go grab a shovel and pull outy the leg bones and slap em in a box and send them home. Often tere is enough of a man left to send home in a medicine bottle. And what parts hunter is going to take the time to sift through several tons of dirt in order to find the small slivers of burnt bone that can help identify a missing airman? To those of us who woudl do it, it is a matter of decency. To the vast majority of wreck hunters, it's a waste of time and money. To the families who have had their father, son, husband or uncle recovered, identified, and brought home, those little slivers are of great worth, and our military committment is to them before it is to wreck hunters.

I get the impression people think that returning remains means one would find large pieces of the body among wreckage. This is the farthest thing from the truth. I dug into a grave once and it was three days before we were able to identify pieces of bone as human. It's really extremely hard most times to do. Especially when an aircraft is doing a couple hundred miles an hour when it impacts. The aircraft is more likely to survive than a body. Add to the impact the fuel fire and you can imagine how hard it would be, fifty or sixty years later, to find enough remains to help. And until those remains can be identified and brought home, stealing parts from the site is going to make it even more difficult to identify the aircrew.

[Forgotten Field]

Muddy,
Thanks for chiming in- you definitely have a good experience base about this. With your experience and contacts, could you make a rough estimate of what it would cost to do do such an excavation and analysis of, say, a 100 by 500 yard debris field with three probable fatalities located in triple canopy jungle? Or just a man-hours estimate would be good. I thought those numbers might be enlightening for some of the people posting on this topic.

[Django]

I believe Mr Ruff passed away last year. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong...

The "Cadillac of the Skies" comes from wartime ads for Cadillac.

The article has a definite slant to it. Someone over there must have some kind of connection, because last year they did a 3 day article covering the recovery of remains in PNG. Now this year, it's an article on how horrible the warbird community is regarding the MIAs.

[Dan K]

I believe Mr Ruff passed away last year. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong...

Indeed, you are wrong. Norb Ruff passed away in November of 2007.

The Globe article implies that Norb Ruff was present at last year's AirVenture. Error and yellow journalism typically walk hand-in-hand.

[jamesintucson]

I believe Mr Ruff passed away last year. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong...

Indeed, you are wrong. Norb Ruff passed away in November of 2007.

The Globe article implies that Norb Ruff was present at last year's AirVenture. Error and yellow journalism typically walk hand-in-hand.

My boss who is quoted in the article says he did the interview with the reporter 2 years ago. So I'd bet the Globe just never ran the article back then and their editors were looking to fill some space on Memorial Day, found an old article about veterans and just went with it.
James

[tom d. friedman]

the biggest misnomer of the article is to assume that every wreck had casualties. alot of crews successfully bailed out & survived. what's odd is i saw no mention of a moral issue in regard to japanese wreck recoveries.

[Enemy Ace]

Mboots, my point is that the wrecks are going to be recovered, the assets are not there (usually) to support the kind of exhaustive, labor intensive, extremely expensive data collection and remains recovery that you are talking about.
rather than any remains that are found being slung back into the bush or dumped in a ditch on the truck ride back to civilization, it would be nice if they could be turned in somewhere.
And the locals who historically have done most of the scrapping/destruction would have an incentive to turn in remains.
let's face it, with the resources at hand using the "proper acheological process' it will be a thousand years before the WWII cases are finished.
and what about ships and aircraft lost at sea? it's time for a reality check on what's possible.

[Robbie Roberts]

As usual, the biased media slants against something they have a passing acquaintance with...

Robbie

[muddyboots]

Muddy,
Thanks for chiming in- you definitely have a good experience base about this. With your experience and contacts, could you make a rough estimate of what it would cost to do do such an excavation and analysis of, say, a 100 by 500 yard debris field with three probable fatalities located in triple canopy jungle? Or just a man-hours estimate would be good. I thought those numbers might be enlightening for some of the people posting on this topic.

Well, I haven't done jungle work but I can only assume you have to clear the site for digging first. I have been clearing some of land by hand recently using a machete so I'd bet a hundred man hours to get it to a reasonable state to see where you're going.

Then there is the digging. A triple canopy jungle got that way by planting roots, so your digging is going to be slow and horrible. I've never seen an impact zone where parts weren't buried. So each square meter test pit, if you go a meter deep (hardly a deep pit) is going to take a number of hours to punch. I guess it depends on the amount of debris, and how clear the crash zone is--how apparent it is where debris will be. After 60 years, well, I expect you're gonna have to put a hole in for every 20 square meters. I'm betting it would quickly run into the thousands of man hours. Mind, it's not all just the team doing the digging. The team itself is doing the sifting and sorting. See, you sift teh dirt through a screen to find all the little nodules. So iu addition to removing the dirt you have to sift and clean and sort remains. only 1% of the bone you find will be human, but you won't know if a lot of it is human or beast until an osteologist has a look at it. That alone can run into the hundreds of hours.

An example: I helped do sorting on a dig on one of the channel idlands. Aboutten classes of twenty people each spent their classtime sorting the spoils from a relatively small number of middens (trashheaps) on the island. Call it a hundred students a year, doing 20 hours each. And we were nowhere near done with the site by the end of the year. Just sorting. A dig like you are describing would be much worse.

Figure a thousand or more man hours to dig the site and pull all the crash debris out, as well as a huge amount of possibly human remains. And to sort human from beast. And then you get to try to find some DNA in taht mess to ID the individuals.

Much of the work is done by local hires, digging and clearing land isn't exactly brain work. But the IDing remains and just pulling raw bone out of taht mess would drive you sugar. If I remember right the dig at Camp Carrol was a week or so, because it was all in a fairly tight pit. They had been captured, tied up and murdered, then dumped in a fighting hole. So they were very localized. And they were found intact, and the situ wasn't very disturbed. And it still tooka week to dig out and organize.

I'd guess each dig could easily take a thousand man hours.

[muddyboots]

Mboots, my point is that the wrecks are going to be recovered, the assets are not there (usually) to support the kind of exhaustive, labor intensive, extremely expensive data collection and remains recovery that you are talking about.
rather than any remains that are found being slung back into the bush or dumped in a ditch on the truck ride back to civilization, it would be nice if they could be turned in somewhere.
And the locals who historically have done most of the scrapping/destruction would have an incentive to turn in remains.
let's face it, with the resources at hand using the "proper acheological process' it will be a thousand years before the WWII cases are finished.
and what about ships and aircraft lost at sea? it's time for a reality check on what's possible.

I can't argue with you here. All I can say is that depending on wreck hunters to return remains will be akin to depending on a sex fiend to guard the Sheiks harem.

[DaveM2]

A view from 'the other side' Seems a good story got in the way of the facts...again!

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/s ... 21,00.html

[Forgotten Field]

Muddy,
I guessed about 20-30,000 hours. Thanks for your input. Hey, you can build an airplane in a garage with a craftsman drill. It just takes a few thousand hours...

[Mark_Pilkington]

A view from 'the other side' Seems a good story got in the way of the facts...again!

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/s ... 21,00.html

Its good that Rob has been given the opportunity to respond to the implied accusations made in the recent Boston Globe article, it is a pity its authors didnt seek and provide a right of reply in their own article?

the salient points in answer to that other article at Boston.com are:

World War II hero Marion Lutes is believed to have perished in the jungle after surviving the wreck of his P47D Thunderbolt in April 1944.

When locals found the aircraft on a 60-degree slope decades later, the cockpit harness was unlocked and there was no sign of the pilot.

Lutes is still officially listed as missing in action but his Thunderbolt, pulled from the jungle several years ago by Australian salvager and restorer Robert Greinert, is rising phoenix-like in a cavernous hangar at Illawarra Regional Airport, south of Sydney.

While the brave pilot is gone, his memory and that of others who lost their lives defending this country are being kept alive by dedicated Australian enthusiasts.

But Mr Greinert and his Historical Aircraft Restoration Society are incensed by US criticism their work may have compromised the recovery of human remains.

Despite numerous sweeps of the site before the salvage operation, it is understood that the Pentagon has not given up hopes of recovering Lutes' remains.

"It (salvaging aircraft) has been presented as evil grave-robbing, which is just not correct," society spokesman Ben Morgan said.

"It doesn't happen that we storm in, grab this stuff and run. It (the imputation) is very hurtful.

"This is highly insulting to individuals who have devoted a large part of their lives and their personal resources to preserving historic aircraft."

Mr Greinert, who has been recovering and restoring wrecks for three decades, received clearance from PNG authorities and maintains he never touches any site where there are MIA issues.

The Pacific Wrecks website seperately confirms the wreck was subject to a number of MIA searches well before the wreck was recovered.

Wreckage
The wreckage was first located at at about 8,200' near the villages of Nando and Tauta by a group of students 'Operation Drake' in 1979. They discovered the cockpit closed, and no remains were seen.

Although surveyed by US Army CILHI on three occasions, the site was never the subject of a dedicated MIA search for remains of its MIA pilot, and is list as an open MIA cases.

Rachel Phillips, JPAC adds:
"In 1990, a CILHI team surveyed the site. They did not find remains or personal effects. In 1999, there were two CILHI teams that visited the site associated with this case. Neither team found remains or personal effects."

The wreckage remained in situ until October 2004.

Hopefully in future the authors of the Boston Globe article will seek interviews and responses from those they refer to in their articles?, particularly if making accusations against them?


Regards

Mark Pilkington

[A2C]

Again, why such a long dissertation on such an easy subject? The answer is simple, recover your plane, get on the cell phone and call the next of kin of the deceased, and tell them to you've found so and so's remains. Give them a list of funeral homes in the area, and say "I recommend Joe's funeral home". Tell them they have 2 months to get it taken care of, and get the wreck. Pretty straight forward.

No cellular biologists, No forensic hairsplitting nuclear physists, no archeologists, no egyptologists, no environmental radiological technologists, or Phd's. Keep it simple, get back to normal life.