FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii — A joint underwater recovery team of soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians recently completed an intense two-month excavation of sunken World War II airplanes in Palau, retrieving remains that could belong to long-lost American air crews, the Navy said.
Headed by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, the team worked from aboard the USNS Salvor near Ngerekebesang Island, completing work on Feb. 25.
Divers worked seven days a week, often 12 hours a day, in search of remains belonging to servicemembers shot down in aircraft in 1944, the Navy said.
The underwater recovery team spent much of that time excavating the area using archeological tools and painstakingly inspecting the bottom sediment, the Navy said.
“It’s very labor intensive work, and they’ve had a large amount of bottom time making this operation successful,” Lt. Cmdr. Tim Emge, 7th Fleet Salvage Officer, said in a Navy statement.
Source: stripes
