Remains found in Quebec waters believed to belong to WW2 airmenThe wind was fierce and the waves were surging on Josephine Vibert’s wedding day, 70 years ago in Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, a small fishing village on Quebec’s north shore. In 1942, the village became the site of an emergency airstrip on the U.S. military’s so-called “Crimson Route,” a strategic air corridor to Europe through Maine and Newfoundland.
Late in the afternoon on Nov. 2, 1942, not long before the wedding reception, Vibert and most of the village stopped to watch a U.S. Army seaplane taxi from the harbour. But the plane — a PBY Catalina — struggled to clear the water. Vibert recalls the towering waves of the Gulf lashing at the cockpit during its second take-off attempt. “I counted five waves, but there may have been more,” she says from her home, still in Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan. “After the last one, water started entering their plane.”
The town’s fishermen braved the frothing waters to find four crew members clinging to the fuselage. Just moments after the survivors were hauled aboard the local fishing boats, the plane, along with the five remaining crew members, slipped beneath waves, never to be seen again. That is until 2009, when underground divers from Parks Canada found the barnacled, upside-down fuselage of the Catalina some 40 meters below the surface.
“We worked from shore until we hit the plane,” said Marc-Andre Bernier, the chief underwater archeologist for Parks Canada. “When we actually saw that the fuselage was in one piece, we immediately stopped operations and contacted the American authorities.” With the prospect of the remains of American soldiers inside, Canadian officials contacted a joint civilian-military unit in the U.S. that specializes in the identification of citizens lost in war.
Earlier this month the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) dispatched a 50-person team to investigate the site. They arrived on a 78-meter salvage ship, the USNS Grapple. Their 30-day mission is close to wrapping up. Divers have already found what appear to be the remains of the missing airmen, which will be sent to a DNA lab for identification.
But they have also found a trove of artifacts so perfectly preserved they might have been taken from a time warp. From the floor of the Gulf, divers managed to find a Listerine bottle intact, complete with air bubbles and something resembling its original scent.
They also discovered film negatives, aviator glasses and, perhaps most remarkably, paper believed to be from the crew’s log. Bernier says a number of conditions combined to keep so many of the objects in good condition, including near-freezing waters and a depth which allows for little oxygen and light to reach the wreckage. “To find, intact, a plane from the Second World War underwater is already something remarkable,” he told reporters who visited the Grapple last week.
http://www.warhistoryonline.com/feature ... irmen.html
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