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A JPAC RECOVERY Team Deploys to Washington State
RELEASE NO. #05-26  July 12, 2005

HICKAM AFB, HAWAII – One Recovery Team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command will deploy from Hawaii this week for approximately two months to conduct operations in Washington state in hopes of bringing home remains of Americans still missing from World War II. This is the first Joint Field Activity mission in the continental United States since 1996.

Operations will be conducted at two sites in the northern cascades of Washington. One site, in the Wenatchee National Forest, is associated with a SBD-5 Dauntless crash site. The aircraft, with two men aboard, was reported missing on Feb. 15, 1945 after having departed the U.S. Naval Air Station, Seattle, on a training mission. 

The second excavation site, located in the Okanogan National Forest, correlates to P-38E 41-2276 aircraft loss that was reported missing in 1942. The pilot from the 54th Fighter Squadron, 343rd Fighter Group, departed Elmendorf Air Base, Alaska on a maintenance flight to Pain Field, Washington and never arrived.

A four-member investigation team that included a World War II analyst from JPAC deployed to the sites last year. The team found physical evidence at both locations and evaluated archival records leading them to recommend the sites for recovery this year.

JPAC’s mission is to accomplish the fullest possible accounting of all Americans still missing as a result of the nation’s military campaigns through investigative, search and recovery missions. JPAC routinely carries out operations on foreign soil that take its team members worldwide including Russia, Laos, China, Papua New Guinea, and Burma.

Today, there is one American still missing from Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, more than 1,800 from the Vietnam War, 126 from the Cold War, more than 8,100 from the Korean War, and more than 78,000 from World War II.

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