US investigators searching for the remains of two US pilots killed
in a plane crash 50 years ago in China's northeast said Monday they
found wreckage but no bodies.
An
aging witness led the US Army team to a crash site, and officials
planned to test debris found there to see if it was from the C-47
that presumably went missing during the Cold War period.
Team members said they would take the debris and photos and
measurements of the site back to the United States for study, and
decide later whether to continue the search in China.
"We will need more investigation," said Aaron Lehl, a civilian
analyst for the eight-member team from the US Army's Central
Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.
Lehl said he knew of no other American planes missing in that
hilly, wooded area. So if the debris is shown to be US-made
aircraft parts, "then we are very hopeful that this is the aircraft
that went down on that evening," he said at a news conference at
the US Embassy in Beijing.
The team searched for shallow graves where a 78-year-old Chinese
villager said he helped to bury the badly burned bodies of the
pilots near the crash site, but "we did not find any remains," said
Franklin Damann, an anthropologist.
The US team began their search early last week and worked through
the weekend. They were guided to the site by the villager who they
said was the last survivor of a group that arrived about six hours
after the crash and buried the pilots' bodies.
"We did find ... a nice tight pocket of 20 (to) 30 meters of
aircraft wreckage," said Damann.
The team used metal detectors to search a 300-square-foot area and
dug test pits looking for debris, he said.
Damann said none of the items found bore any serial numbers that
would confirm it was from a C-47 or markings from the aircraft
manufacturer, McDonnell Douglas.
China decided to permit the US search in the spirit of humanity and
to further promote friendly relations between the two
countries.
The Chinese government has cooperated with the United States on
several projects to recover the remains of World War II-era
military personnel lost in China. In 1999, a US-China team
recovered the remains of two US airmen whose B-24 bomber crashed
into a mountain in today's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in 1944
while returning from a mission.
(China Daily July 30,
2002)