Miscellaneous Project Archives

• Here's a cool magazine article by BentProp friends Chip Lambert and Dan Bailey (Wreck Diving Magazine, Issue #30) detailing events that led to the beginning of the BentProp mission. So what if it's 20 yeears late? Great story and photos by Chip.
  
  
• What was combat like in Palau? This Web site was created by the son of Sergeant Patrick L. Finelli, USMC, who served at Palau, Yap, and Ulithi. The site contains a collection of first-hand accounts by Sgt. Finelli and links to other sources of information and stories by and about people who fought in and around Palau during WWII.
   
• What was it like being a Marine Aviator in 1944-1945? This is a month-by-month War Diary donated by Michelle and Dennis Kleid with permission of Michelle's father, Major Walter J. Meyer, USMC, who flew F4U Corsairs and was stationed on Peleliu. Major Meyer now lives with his daughter and son-in-law in California.
   
• What was it like being SHOT DOWN as a Marine Aviator in March 1945? First Lieutenant Walter F. Brown's F4U was shot down on a bombing mission over Koror. He barely made it out of the burning aircraft and parachuted into the water. The descriptions of the incident are pretty hair-raising, whether from Walter's perspective or the perspective of the "Dumbo" (PBY) crew that braved considerable enemy fire to pluck Walter out of the water.
   
• Were the men of VMF-121 really as good looking as the legend says? Yep, here's the class photo, taken in Mojave, getting ready to deploy to the Pacific. Photo used with permission of Major Walter
  J. Meyer.
   
• What's it like to be part of a mission to recover remains from a long-lost crash site? The June 2008 issue of GQ Magazine includes an article by Wil Hylton that deals with a B-24 crash site that was located and identified by the BentProp team in 2004, and was the subject of three JPAC recovery missions over four years, finishing up in the first quarter of 2008. This site yielded the remains of airmen who went down with that aircraft on 1 September 1944. You can read about the process, the people involved in the search and recovery, and the family of one of those airmen in this moving article. This is a long article and a great read. You'll be handsomely rewarded if you read it all the way through to the end.
   
• What's it like to be a member of an honor guard receiving a fallen service member who's returning from war - in a "transfer case"?