Pacific Flyer Profile by Chuck Stewart She Tracks Down Missing B-17s In The Jungles of New Guinea Article in Pacific Flyer

Daughter of Col. Olson, Pilot, 5th Bomber Command pilot, Olson's Pacific Theatre B-17 Project's mission is to collect, preserve, and make available to the public the history of the B-17s and their crews serving in the Pacific Theatre. Most of my time is spent locating crew and visiting them to document their war careers; and, when possible, copy their military records, photographs, diaries and flight logs. It's a very labor-intensive project but the rewards never cease to amaze. The other portion of the project is to develop a complete diary of each B-17 which served in the Pacific theatre. The "diary" includes the day the plane left the factory, the modifications it received, when it went overseas, its combat missions, and ultimately its fate. When wartime documents indicate a plane was shot down, or went missing, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find out what happened to the plane and then try to locate it, documenting the crash site, on trips to Papua New Guinea (PNG). I have documented ten B-17 crash sites in PNG.

ID Bracelet and the Beginning of other New Searches
The "Good Morning, America!" show which caught the attention of Patricia Gaffney-Ansel was the result of a ceremony in Oregon which received national press coverage. The ceremony came about after the following events:

In 1993, Richard Leahy, George Wyatt and I identified a recently-discovered B-17 as one that had been missing for 50 years. The same day we identified it, I notified my then state senator, Senator McCain, of the discovery. The crash-site included the remains of the crew. An identification bracelet had been taken from one of the crew members and sold to a scavenger. We tracked down the scavenger and retrieved the bracelet, bringing it back to the United States. A search for the family of the crewman who had been wearing the bracelet resulted in locating his former wife. Upon making contact with her, she and I agreed to meet in Salem, Oregon as I wanted to personally return the bracelet.

The State of Oregon held a ceremony to honor the crew and at that ceremony, I returned the dead crewman's I.D. bracelet to his former wife. This ceremony was covered by national press and came to the attention of the "Good Morning, America!" agents, who asked that the wife and I appear to discuss our roles and tell them what it was like to find a crew that had been missing for 50 years. It was that program that Patricia Gaffney-Ansel saw.

Eventually a planned trip to Papua New Guinea prompted me to ask her if she wanted to join me on part of the trip. I told her I would set her up with a visit to the area where her father was last seen. The proposition resulted in our traveling to Papua New Guinea together. I was on a trek to New Ireland and wasn't sure how long I would be gone, (or where I was going to stay or, for that matter, how I was going to locate the B-17 I sought), so I helped her get set up with a trip to Gusap and on Mother's Day, 1995, gave her a good-by hug and sent her on her way, and then boarded my own plane for Rabaul. Quite some time later we met again back in Port Moresby for the return trip home and shared our experiences.

Years later when crash-site aficionado Fred Hagen mentioned to me that he had got wind of a P-47 in the area where Gaffney-Ansel's father was last seen, I urged him to make contact with her. Hagen's having found the plane with Gaffney on board is short of a miracle, but it couldn't have happened to a more deserving individual than Patricia Gaffney-Ansel.

B-17 Project
Each and every day finds me engaged, in some way, in collecting, cataloguing or sorting the history of the B-17 Flying Fortress in the Pacific theatre. When I have located every veteran or his family, and when I have determined what happened to each and every B-17 that flew in the theatre, I will, at last, be done.

Each entry includes their name, serial number, unit and anything from a single note about a flight they took to pages of detailed records of their flights, missions and awards. The data base also includes the serial number of each B-17 which flew in the Pacific and all the information I have been able to find about that particular aircraft. The information includes such details as when the plane was accepted by the Army Air Force, when it was delivered to the Pacific theatre, what missions it flew, and, of course, what happened to it. Air Force record cards contain disposition information which is sometimes obtuse and other times inaccurate. On more than one occasion efforts to be precise about a plane's final resting place have led me to Papua New Guinea.

Overseas Research
Trips to Papua New Guinea are for the purpose of locating and documenting each crash site. Three trips to the mainland of New Guinea, and four to New Britain, have resulted in locating and documenting ten B-17 sites. At this time future plans call for a visit to Milne Bay to locate the remains of three B-17s, or to New Britain to locate two more B-17s. After that, I believe there are only three or four more B-17s which could be located for documentation purposes. The rest, I believe, are all inhabitants of the deep. Until organizations with high-tech underwater equipment begin taking an interest in the waters off the coasts of Papua New Guinea, many of the World War II wrecks will remain undiscovered.

Future Plans
That's it in a nutshell. My goal is to eventually set up a "research hot line" for people interested in the B-17's activities in the Pacific theatre and to assist families in learning what their brothers and uncles and fathers did in the war. I have a data base of over 3,000 wartime biographies of B-17 crew and the information continues to grow by leaps and bounds. No books on my work are currently planned; however, I feel that if I can get six to eight more B-17 sites documented, I may look at whether there is sufficient material to warrant a publication on the B-17 sites of Papua New Guinea. In the meantime, I am working on a unit history of the B-17 era of the 64th Squadron of the 43rd Bomb Group. Completion of this document is planned for 2002.

Restoration or Rust in Peace?
Much has been written and discussed over the years about whether crashed planes should be left where they rest, or recovered and restored. My preference is to let others debate the issue! Whether a plane is left alone or restored, the history needs to be preserved and made available for all time. Long after the planes are gone, the history will endure.

Goals
My field is extremely narrow but I go very, very deep, insisting on uncovering every little detail. My goal is to keep history alive, and the memory of those lads who served at the front in New Guinea during WWII.