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On March 25, 1944, a U.S. Navy bomber disappeared into the fog over
the Bering Sea heading for a Japanese target. Fifty-five years later
it has suddenly reemerged with a remarkable tale. NOVA travels to
the plane's final resting place to unravel the mystery. Using clues
found at the crash site and the latest forensic techniques, a U.S.
government team gets to the bottom of this half-century-old
disappearance.
Taking off from Attu in the Aleutian Islands at the height of World
War II, Bomber 31 was on its way to attack a Japanese outpost
guarding the northern approach to Japan's main islands. The mission
was part of a largely forgotten campaign in the Pacific war—a
bold diversion to convince the Japanese that American forces were
preparing to invade from the north, forcing the imperial command to
deploy valuable resources to defend that front. At the same time,
Allied forces under General Douglas MacArthur were making the main
push from the south.
Of the five planes in Bomber 31's squadron, one crashed on take-off,
and three completed the mission. Bomber 31 and its seven-man crew
went missing for more than half a century.
Then in 1999 the U.S. embassy in Moscow received a surprising
package: half a dozen photographs taken by a Russian historian,
showing the wreckage of a World War II-era American bomber
discovered on the slope of a volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in
eastern Siberia. How the plane got there and what happened to its
crew are mysteries that only deepened as NOVA arrived with
investigators from the United States to explore the
remains—the first recovery team of its kind allowed in Russia.
At the outset, all that was known for certain was that this was
Bomber 31, confirmed by the type of aircraft—a U.S. Navy
PV-1—and the faded "31" stenciled on the tail. The party
included a ten-person U.S. Army recovery team, headed by forensic
anthropologist Ann Bunch. The United States is unique among
governments in spending $100 million a year to bring home the
remains of missing crew members. (For more on this effort, see
Bringing Home MIAs.) Also
participating were Ralph Wetterhahn, a Vietnam veteran and military
crash investigator, and Tom Rains, who was only ten months old when
his father disappeared on Bomber 31's final mission.
The trail of evidence leads to a strange story told by a Russian
geologist who chanced on the wreckage in 1962 and remembers finding
four bodies. At that time the Kamchatka Peninsula was the site of an
ultra-secret Soviet military base. Alerted to the presence of the
plane, the KGB took charge and probably dispersed the wreckage to
disguise it from U.S. spy satellites. What they did with the bodies
is a mystery. After scouring the site, the recovery team finds small
bits of bone, which are sent to the United States for DNA analysis
in hopes that the half-century-old fragments can be matched to
relatives of missing crew members.
Also at the crash site, Wetterhahn finds telltale evidence of the
plane's last moments. Battle damage on the engines shows that Bomber
31 was in distress, and an unexploded bomb implies that it had not
had time to perform its mission.
Working backward from Bomber 31's assigned target—the Japanese
base at Shumshu in the Kuril Islands—Wetterhahn takes NOVA
through a likely scenario that brought the plane and crew to a
daring landing and a heroic last struggle.
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