Solving the mystery of a missing WWII soldier
November 23, 2014 - Until he found the wreckage of the plane his grandfather flew, Casey Doyle says the circumstances surrounding Jimmie Doyle’s disappearance were a painful unknown. Watch Anderson Cooper’s full report, "A Forgotten Corner of Hell.”
Anderson Cooper accompanies volunteers searching for the remains of World War II airmen missing in action in the waters off Palau2014 Nov 23 - More than 400,000 Americans died fighting in the Second World War. Adding to the heartache of that staggering loss, nearly one in five of those killed was declared missing in action. To this day, the families of some 73,000 unaccounted for servicemen have lived with the mystery of how they died and have been deprived of the comfort that comes from a burial. At the end of the war, the technology didn't exist to find and identify many of the missing, but today it does. This is the remarkable story of a group of volunteers who spend their own time and money quietly searching for these long lost servicemen -- remarkable because of what they've discovered in recent years. They are doing it, they say, for the fallen and their families.
And focus on Palau, a Pacific island nation that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war 70 years ago, a place some pilots called "a forgotten corner of hell."Fly today over Palau's 586 small islands and miles of barrier reefs and you'll see no sign of the carnage that once occurred here. But beneath the jungle canopy you can still find the rusted ruins of Japanese anti-aircraft guns; and in the clear blue water, a graveyard of planes and the men who flew them. As the Second World War raged in the Pacific, the islands of Palau were teeming with Japanese soldiers and under attack by American planes. The skies overhead were filled with Hellcats, Corsairs, Avengers and B-24 Liberators. On September 1, 1944, this B-24, number 453, and its crew took off on a bombing mission. read more>>>
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