WWII Wreckage Discovered

A wreckage has been discovered of a WWII plane that had crashed in the deep heavily forested area. Loggers stumbled upon the wreckage on March 18th 2010. The plane is suggested that it is one from a recorded wreckage from 1948, although is still under investigation. I think that it is awesome that we still find relics and wrecks from times of history such as this. Here is the actual article from KVAL.com one of Oregon’s news stations:

World War II plane wreckage

discovered on Oregon Coast

TILLAMOOK, Ore. – Loggers working in the forest near Rockaway Beach, Ore., stumbled upon a World War II-era U.S. Navy airplane last Thursday, Oregon State Police said.

The loggers called police, who then called the Navy. The first officers on the scene said they believe there may be human remains inside the wreckage.

The plane is a Curtiss SB2C Helldiver.

A small team of Navy investigators was at the crash site Thursday collecting evidence and taking photos. They will send the evidence to a special team at the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command in Hawaii.

“They have a really big team of people who take that information and cross check it with information they have,” said Sean Hughes, a Navy public affairs officer.

Bomb squad technicians also checked the site and did not find any signs of unexploded ordnance.

The plane was found in a heavily wooded area. Police officers who were on the scene reported seeing a wing, tail section, landing gear and other debris. The wreckage is spread over a 200 yard area.

Hughes said it’s too early to tell where the plane originally came from, however Naval Air Station Tillamook was in use just 20 miles away until it was decommissioned in 1948. Still, Hughes said there were countless flights up and down the coast during the war.

Investigators know the Helldiver was used during World War II, but don’t know exactly when this plane might have crashed. If records from that era of a missing plane near Tillamook still exist, they haven’t been uncovered yet.

Right now, Hughes said the Navy’s first priority is maintaining the integrity of the crash site and getting evidence to the more specialized investigators.

“If there are human remains on board, they are one of our fallen shipmates and they need to be treated with integrity, and so do their families,” he said.

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Update from Yahoo News:

Anderson said he has been informed by the U.S. Navy that investigators were close to identifying the airplane.

The investigative work includes going over old Navy records that document plane crashes and missing crew members.

The wreckage was discovered on March 18 by loggers working in the densely wooded area.

Anderson said among the wreckage, spread out over an area of about 200 yards, are a large section of the plane’s tail, sections of a wing and the remains of an engine. Some of the debris melted from the heat of the crash.

He said the plane apparently made a deep impact when it crashed, and some wreckage may still be buried.

A Navy team and law enforcement officials have secured the crash site as the investigation continues.

“If we’ve got a fallen war hero in the hills up there, or more than one, we want to make sure they’re treated with respect and are given back to family,” Anderson said.

It is possible more than one person was in the Helldiver, which carried a pilot and a radio operator-gunner.

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This is a video of an SB2C:

This just proves that you can never know what you will find out there in the wilderness. I am sure that some of the most famous missing planes are out there as well.  I hope they find the families of the pilots ( if there are any pilots at the wreckage) and send them to their families. I can only imagine what it feels like to have your child, sibling, uncle/aunt, or relative just “disappear” and never have any closure about their relatives death. If anything develops  further I will post the updates.

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