The 2016 Discovery of the Aft Fuselage

 

Why do we think there was another crash site?

When Pat Scannon found the Wing and the Nose Section of ship '603 he was not satisfied that this was all of the wreck.  These were both in the waters surrounding the island of Koror, the wing to the south, the nose to the north.  The eyewitnesses stated that the burning wreck hit in the target area of Koror town, i.e. on dry land!

A relative of Gunner Herb Farnam, Ted Mikita, was curious as to why he never found the main fuselage and asked him in 2015 on Mikita's first trip to Palau.  Scannon answered that he tried to find it for almost 20 years, had some clues, but figured that the near impenetrable mangroves fringing the islands must have swallowed it up, or it had been buried by the islanders, or maybe even the Japanese.  He was comforted to discover that some human remains had eventually been recovered from this aircraft and that the “crew” had been “officially” repatriated to the U.S. and buried in a plot at the Zachary Taylor National Cemetery in Louisville.  He had more pressing discoveries and searches to make and this one basically fell off his radar.

In 2015 Ted Mikita began his own search to find missing parts of the airplane.  Due to Scannon's discovery it had become apparent that that the nose compartment broke off in mid flight.

However nobody knew this when they went searching for bodies in 1948.

In March 2016, Mikita made his second trip to search for the missing part of the bomber, assisted by son Christopher and daughter Tallulah.  Having visited the island before, he knew a lot about the conditions and the clues.  One clue discovered in 2015 was a propeller that served as a lawn ornament and appeared to be from a B-24.  The islander in front of who’s house it stood was a small child, he related, when his father pulled it off a wing behind his home toward the mangrove swamp.  He couldn’t remember anything else about it.  Mikita wanted to make contact again with the islander Tony to have him take the searchers down towards the mangrove swamp and introduce the family researchers to the various islanders in the neighborhood and to help explain to them, in Palauan, why they had a metal detector and what the searchers hoped to do.

Tony led the searchers down a dirt road behind his place, and began recollecting how he used to tag after his mother on this walk while a youngster when she would farm taro plants down there in the marsh.  Tony remembered how he would climb a big old rubber tree, and he realized, when the group got to the area of the old rubber tree that he did indeed remember a piece of fuselage down there.  He used to play in it!  They then talked to Tony's cousin by marriage in whose yard the rubber tree used to sit.  They showed her pictures of B-24 parts pictures and asked if she saw any of them.  She hadn’t.  Tony and the group crossed a creek and went between two houses while Tony explains what we were doing to a Palauan man inside one of the houses.  All windows were openings without glass or screen.  The Palauan tells Tony to check in the creek.  They turn around and head back towards the creek and Tony sees an old piece of rusty equipment and exclaims “That’s it, I remember this!”  Later Mikita found under the sediment of the creek the remains of the belly turret and at least one waist gun, along with many other aircraft parts.