BentProp Supporters Update #5 Sunday, April 2, 2006

They also serve, who keep the home fires burning!

Hello Everyone!

I was asked to do an Update that might give you a hint as to what transpires behind the scenes at The BentProp Project. This is with respect to researching from back home, the stories that took place over 60 years ago over, on and around the island of Palau. Since I did not get to Palau this year, but read the events as they unfolded, I was able to do some legwork to help the team from afar. It started as a simple question in a short e-mail: “Can you confirm that this yellow band we have found actually belongs to what we are looking for?”

Recent find of our H.V.U. An Avenger motor with a yellow band on the prop hub.

Photo by Reid Joyce

But first, everybody’s favorite section: lessons learned! Sorry for leaving this out in the earlier posts, but NOT GETTING HURT seemed like the only lesson for me to learn until recently. And that was painfully obvious.

1. When tracking down information, “Never give up. Never surrender.” — Cmdr. Peter Quincy Taggart Galaxy Quest. 2. When shipping your gear out to where you don’t end up, your teammates will gratefully use your stuff. 3. Those out in the field tend to think those of us back home are on the couch eating bon-bons. 4. What we definitively know to be true, sometimes does not match the memories of the participants. 5. Don’t get hurt prior to your adventure embarkation date. Did I mention this already? 6. Everyone likes the story of The BentProp Project.

Flip’s lucky pile for all to use Photo by Pat, Reid, DOB or Mike, not sure which

You can certainly see a band on the prop hub.
Photos courtesy of NARA

Using a Google search, we both came up with lots of black and white photos of the squadron we are interested in. Pretty hard to tell yellow from white in a black and white photo. Unless of course you are a rocket scientist. And we do have a few of you reading this. So, if you care to use your tools to identify a yellow band from a black and white photo, please feel free to send me the results.

In the request from the field for this intel, DOB and Mike included the names and last known phone numbers of two of the surviving pilots from this squadron. And a request to call said old codgers, and anyone else we can think of, to see if they could shed a little light on this little mystery. Since Jennifer got this e-mail first, she promptly deferred to me. Something like reverse dibs.

Now I needed to call some of my contacts and see if they can come up with something. I made a call to Bill Painter at the Kalamazoo Aviation History Museum (AirZoo). The museum has been very helpful in the past with answering some questions from the field. I asked about the band. Bill consulted his official files and books and asked, “What band?” In the books of official Navy colors, no band is shown. Looking at the photo above, we know that is certainly not true. We’re guessing that the band was added once the squadron was away from CONUS.

Nice drawing of a generic paint scheme on Avengers.

Sent to me by Val Thal

Now to the Navy proper. I called a contact at the Navy Historical Center. Joe Gordon is an aviation expert. But this info wasn’t at his fingertips. He’s running it up the flagpole to see if someone can get us an answer.

However, I’m not good at just sitting around. So, my next call was to the National Museum of Naval Aviation at NAS Pensacola, FL. If you’ve never been to this museum, you need to go. It is wonderful! The entire story of Naval Aviation is told with wonderful displays, lots of aircraft and a ton of artwork. Plus, you can get a genuine Cubi Dog in the genuine Cubi O’Club Ready Room Bar. I’d tell you all about the original in the Philippines, great stories, but then someone would knock on my door late at night and you’d never see or hear from me again. [Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. – Blogmaster]

The curator there, Hill Goodspeed, knew his collection inside and out and he said he did not have the information there either. However, he suggested I call RRS Aviation. Bob Schneider did the restoration on the Avenger that is hanging in the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas. He knows Avengers.

	Now I am in unfamiliar terrain. A cold call is about to happen. Bob couldn’t have been nicer. He listened to our story, and told me that he kind of agreed that there isn’t a band on the prop hub. And he did not put one on the aircraft he restored.
Courtesy of Bush Presidential Library

That is until he turned around and looked at a painting of Avengers. “By golly there, there are bands on the hubs. Most are white but there is one that is yellow.”
	Low Holding
	by Robert Taylor

Bob suggested I call some of the remaining pilots and see what they remember. He gave me three names to call, two of which I already had. Those phone calls made all the efforts of The BentProp Project worthwhile. I introduced myself to these heroes and they named the pilot who we are looking for as if they had just been chatting with him. These gentlemen remember the day their squadron mate went down with vivid clarity. For them, it was like yesterday.

One man was the wingman and watched him get hit. The other was in the next wave of aircraft and saw the previous flight return with one missing airplane. Each shared their memories with me.

You must be thinking “But what about the yellow band?” I asked, and neither have a memory of any band being on the prop hub. Now it’s getting just plain strange. We certainly have photos of a band on the prop hub, yet, they have no memory of it. My guess is that although this bit of information is important to us, it was not meaningful to the pilots at the time.

Bob made two other suggestions to me. One was “Call Robert Taylor, the painter,” and see what his source of information was. Mr. Taylor is known for being historically accurate in his work. His portfolio of artwork is immense. If there is a theme you are interested in, he has painted it. He lives in England and with the time zone difference, I would have to wait until the next day to call him. Of course I would have to find someone who had his phone number. Minor detail that. The other suggestion was to call President Bush and see what he remembers. Just to make sure you’re in synch with me that would be Bush 41, rather than 43. President Bush flew Avengers during World War Two.

I left a message with President Bush’s Chief of Staff and spoke with Mary who is the guardian of the front door at the office. She listened intently, obviously taking notes (at least I hope she was). The Chief of Staff called while I was out (damn, only a voicemail, but I left the Caller ID on the phone just to show off to someone later) but said that those in the office in the know, (wink, wink, ’ey, ’ey, nudge, nudge, know what I mean) don’t remember any bands being on the prop hub. Well, this isn’t going our way.

We chatted a few days later and The Chief of Staff suggested I call Bob Stinnett who wrote a book about President Bush’s war years. While we were chatting, he got an e-mail from his “Boss.” Two words: “Never yellow.” Did that mean there were bands, but they weren’t yellow? I could live with that interpretation. But then what do we have out in that damn ugly terrain?

Bob Stinnett was also a pleasure to chat with. And of course, the yellow band is a mystery to him too. Looking through his book, it seems the squadron in question had no band on any of the airplanes until shortly before the Peleliu invasion. The prop hubs were all band-free in earlier photos. Could this have been an invasion marking for the squadron? Certainly doesn’t stand out as the Normandy D-Day stripes do.

Now, how to get a hold of a famous aviation artist? Called back to the Naval Aviation Museum and spoke both with Captain Rasmussen and Earl Rogers of The Foundation. I told them my dilemma and they hooked me up with Mr. Taylor’s business number. Did I mention you should go visit this museum? It’s wonderful.

The next day, I called England. No answer. I tried later in the evening. A male voice answered. It was Mr. Taylor’s son. He listened to my story and suggested I should call back on Tuesday as his Father was off on holiday. I sent a few photos via e-mail so he has something to look at rather than just hear a wild story from some yahoo Yank.

That leaves me with one more pilot from the squadron to try. I left a message for him the first time I called, and he’s been out and about ever since. Must be on holiday too. However, I took a break from typing this paragraph, picked up the phone, called and he was home. Seems he’s been trying to phone me since I left the message but without success. And you know exactly what he remembers about the yellow band: bupkis. Very interesting that three of the four pilots from the squadron do not remember the band. Yet, one more time, here it is:

Once again

Photo from NARA

Let’s take a break in this storytelling as I am heading down to The Library of Congress tomorrow to see what they have to offer our group. Seems they have a collection of maps from around the world. According to their online catalog, they have Japanese Maps from 1944. These maps might allow us to interpret the writings of Japanese participants of the war. The Japanese renamed everything on Palau when they moved in. When some former Imperial Japanese Army person writes about Kitakamakurafruitbatama as a name of a town, that name no longer exists as everything has reverted back to the Palauan names. Now we might have our own Rosetta Stone for these personal memoirs.

So, as a form of intermission, let me add some more photos of Peleliu, which is what this is all about any way.

D-Day at Peleliu	On the beach
Flying boat going in
TBF Avenger after being signaled to unfold wings by LtJG Udell on the flight deck of USS San Jacinto CVL 30. (note the aircraft still airborne)	Corsair landing
Hellcat VF51 from USS San Jacinto, CVL 30
Hanger deck	Flight deck operations
Marine Corsair bombing run. On one of the shortest flights of the war. This aircraft had just taken off, raised his gear, dropped his bomb, turned and entered the landing pattern. There’s a pretty good chance that this photo is of Bill Cantrell who flew Corsairs off of Peleliu and went with us to Palau in 2002.
Marines advancing on Peleliu	Marines in Horseshoe Valley
	All photos Courtesy of NARA

I’m back from Washington. An interesting time. I found a few maps that might become our Rosetta Stone. However, they are in Japanese and for all I know, everything I copied is a gasoline station travel map.
	Japanese Wartime Map
	Courtesy of The Library of Congress

I also found my way to the Asian Reading Room. It’s just past a sign that says in big letters No Entry Except for Members of Congress and in little letters and Asian Reading Room. I had 30 minutes to figure out what they had and if any of it would be useful. The first title I found proved we need to come back: Disposition of Soldiers Bodies by Hiroshi Funasaka. The bulk of the collection is un-translated Japanese texts. There are some that have been translated so we can browse those. For the others, we will need to recruit some Japanese helpers.

While at the LOC, I made my call to England and got my chance to ask Robert Taylor about the bands. Now keep in mind he did this painting a number of years ago and a lot of research goes into each painting. That is why his artwork is sought after. It is accurate down to the rivet heads. So I knew the band mystery was about to be solved.

“I know I did it for a good reason, I just don’t know why.” Yes!!!!!! No wait. Not exactly proof positive about the bands. Again, another gracious individual gave me a bit of time and we chatted about this mystery more. We came to the conclusion that the yellow band was not artistic license on his part, but the source of where this colored band came from is lost to history.

For the moment.

The BentProp Project doesn’t give up. Keep in mind that some of the wreck sites Pat has found over the years entailed many searches of Palauan jungles and waters, many trips to The Naval Archives, many interviews with participants and witnesses and years of patience. Somehow, we will explain the mystery of the yellow band on the prop hub of an Avenger.

But don’t think I am the only one doing this sort of research. Pat, Reid, DOB and Mike have all made multiple trips to the National Archives, reunion groups and to individual interviews. Jennifer has made many a trip to film participants and capture their memories. Val has made many trips to reunion groups and chases down leads through her network of friends. And a couple of new names have joined the research branch of The BentProp Project: Katie Rasdorf and Mark Swank. They have both spent many hours chasing down information at the National Archives.

But the chief researcher is Pat. He has devoted 12 years to sorting through all the data he can find, and turn it into useful intelligence so that we can find something out in the middle of the jungle or ocean.

So in a nutshell, that’s what we do. We chase down leads to help locate and identify wreck sites. If we can do that with some degree of certainty, it makes it much more likely that the official government searchers will mount an expedition and bring someone home from a war that ended 61 years ago.

Blue SKies, Flip


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BentProp Supporters Update #4 Thursday, February 23, 2006

Hello BentProp Supporters!

If you have been going to the websites, (and you have, I just know it!) you know that the team has headed south to the island of Peleliu. They will be out of touch for a few days. So I thought I would give you an idea of what is going on down there. All photos by me except where noted.

Peleliu is a magical place. Its unparalleled beauty,

BentProp Supporters Update #3 Thursday, February 16, 2006

Reid Joyce’s BentProp updates from the field

Mike, my Son’s web page with reports from the field

Hello Everyone!

P-MAN VIII is officially underway! As I sit here in my office, looking out at a gray Michigan day…..But wait! You’re thinking I should be in Palau just about now WITH the P-MAN team. You’re right. I should be. But, as announced on The BentProp Project website (You ARE going there every day to see what is transpiring, aren’t you?) I got damaged in Thailand.

I trashed my left knee (the formerly good knee) on a skydive prior to setting the new 400 person record. My knee is a bit unstable. Jungle or water work right at the moment would be problematic. Mostly, I would endanger the team if I ventured out of civilization. So I elected to go home, check out the knee thoroughly, recuperate and if I can rejoin the mission before it’s over, great. If I can’t, then P-MAN IX has my name all over it.

I’ll keep this story short and to the point as it really has nothing to do with searching for MIAs in Palau in 2006. So, in condensed version, here is what happened since Rebecca and I arrived in Bangkok after our lovely night in the Tokyo airport:

BentProp Supporters Update #2 Sunday, January 29, 2006

Hello Everyone!

I’m up at 11,600 meters in a Thai Airways Airbus 330, enroute from Tokyo Narita International Airport (NRT) to Bangkok, Thailand (BKK). Sounds fairly simple: leave Detroit (DTW), arrive in BKK. But if you remember my past experiences traveling the globe, you know I’ll have story to tell.

We got on the Northwest flight (remember, the only airline you’re supposed to fly) in DTW. The plan was to get to NRT and an hour and a half later, go to BKK. The loads were quite full. As a back up, we had some passes on Thai Airways for the next day’s flight. Northwest only has one flight a day to BKK. Thai Airways has three. But that was for "just in case."

The flight from DTW was quite enjoyable. When we got into the greater Tokyo area, we had to hold. A snow storm was affecting the arrival flow into NRT. The Captain said we would only hold for about 10-15 minutes. Good to his word, we commenced the approach within that window. When we broke out of the clouds, we saw a beautiful snow covered Japanese landscape. Quite pretty. We cleared the runway and taxied to a spot pretty close to our gate.

Then we were told we would have to hold for a gate. Seems NRT isn’t used to a lot of snow and they were getting a lot now. Deicing was delayed for a number of airplanes due to the volume of airplanes that needed to deice. And in Tokyo, it’s mostly big airplanes such as 747s and A340s. And lots of them. Almost every airline had planes at their gates that would normally be empty for the arrival aircraft. Airplanes that were supposed to leave at 1400 were still there at 1700. And planes kept coming into NRT. That is until the airport tarmac filled up and they had to divert to other Japanese cities. Every parking space was filled in NRT.

What should have been 20 minutes turned into five plus hours to get to the gate. Our connecting flight to BKK was still at its gate so we ran to it only to be told that there would be no seats available for us. I could ride the jumpseat, but Rebecca would be left behind. Not a good plan.

Our choice was to go to Thai Airways and see if they still had a flight holding for BKK, go to the hotel or hang at the gate area. We chose the hotel. After all, I had a back up plan for Thai Airways the next day, and a bed, shower and some sleep sounded really good. However, we would have to pass through immigration in order to enter Japan. Well, at least Rebecca could see Japan this time. Last time, you should check my story from two years ago, I left Rebecca in a transit lounge while I had to deal with a ticketing issue. She never got to see Japan. And we had to go through Manila to get to Palau and she did not get to see that country either.

There was easily an hour wait just to get our passports stamped. Seems everyone else was heading out too.

Went to see about baggage. I had checked one bag. Not my skydiving gear, but all my clothes. I had checked it to BKK on NWA. To make a long story a little shorter, our agent said, trust me, I’ll transfer the bag to Thai Airways. That burned up another hour. It’s pretty close to midnight now.

Went to the area for the crew bus to the hotel, where I had a reservation. Ran into a Northwest crewmember who said they were in line for a taxi as the bus stopped running at 10pm. There were easily 1,000 people in line for a cab. All the airlines were sending people to hotels. And all the hotels were said to be full in the area around the airport. I had a reservation, but if we couldn’t get there, what good was it?

Okay, let’s go back inside to the gate area and wait for tomorrow’s flights. Nope, security closed and they kicked everyone out of the gate areas. Headed to the other terminal where Thai Airways is located. It’s a 20 minute bus ride. No Thai Airways staff personnel were around. The terminal closes for business around 11pm. Even during weather problems such as this one. Walked around a bit and found the only thing open was a McDonald’s. Not that desperate yet for food.

Found an Australian woman with her child. They were supposed to fly out and had left her hubby in a downtown hotel. He was coming out in a taxi to get her and take her back to downtown Tokyo. She offered to drop us at our hotel. She even loaned us a phone card to check and see if we still had our room. We couldn’t get in touch with the hotel, so we elected to stay. Gave our new friend some raisins and nuts and off they went to the Aeroflot sign to meet her hubby, in about 1½ hours if it all worked out for them.

So, we can’t get to the hotel, can’t get to a gate, can’t make arrangements for tomorrow and 1000’s of our new bestest friends are in the same boat: we’re camping on a linoleum floor of an airport!

We got a spot right where the line for Thai Airways will start the next day. JAL was handing out emergency sleeping bags so we grabbed two and nested. JAL was handing out these gems to anyone who needed them. It was a nice gesture. And we’re keeping ours "just in case." Went to McDonald’s to get something to eat. It just closed.

Found an Internet machine so I could try to find a way out of Japan the next day. Thankfully, I got some Japanese Yen the day prior. Only this thing only took coins. But, Japanese vending machines are plentiful and smart. Bought a can of coffee and got 90 minutes of coins as change. Figured out we’ll get out on NWA late tomorrow if not on Thai Airways. Seems the weather forced some mainland flights to cancel coming to Japan, which opened up seats for us to BKK. But, we’ll get to BKK much earlier if we stick with Thai. So we camped out on our number one spot.

Rebecca was able to sleep a bit, but I was up all night. Kept buying cans of coffee so I could surf the net. Talked with our neighbors and found many people trying to fly Quantas to various spots in Australia.

At about 6am, the airport started to wake up. One group of Australians was trying to get home. We watched them for hours being shuffled from one ticket counter to another, and back again as the Japanese system doesn’t assign counter space on a permanent basis. Each time they stopped at a counter, it looked as if they had solved their problems. They hadn’t. Saw a news report in Bangkok today about a group of Australians stranded between two ticket counters in Narita.

The Thai Airways folks started setting up their counter space and I felt much better. There is a bag security screening that is done before you get to the ticket counters. I had hoped my ID badge would get us through that early. Nope. Wait until your airline is called. At about 8am, Thai was open for business. We were first in line and first to the counter. They put us on standby and said at 9am go to counter 21 for your boarding pass. Sounds good to me. They also put a note in to grab my checked bag from NWA.

In the next hour I saw way more folks at the ticket counter than an Airbus 330 can hold. But, we had faith.

I went to ticket counter 21 and asked a little early how it looked. They said poor. We stayed the course.

At 9am, the supervisor said go to counter 16, get a boarding pass and don’t be late at the gate or we’ll leave you. 45 minutes, no problem.

Got our boarding coupon with 15 minutes to go. Problem. Had to pass through immigration and the line was at least 45 minutes long. Went to the crew line and asked if we could be granted a one time good deal to use the crew line (no waiting there). The immigration officer said to go to the head of a line. We did and got through with 8 minutes to spare. Ran to the gate and found it was delayed.

Saw a number of faces I recognized from our waiting in the terminal the night before. With all that went on, it was amazing in hindsight that no one complained while we were stuck in the airplane and we only saw two upset people the rest of the time we were loitering in the airport.

We boarded and found out we got the last two seats on the airplane.

Another pleasant flight. The Thai Airways staff was excellent.

Got to BKK and found my bag was not there. But, Thai Airways said they would get it to me. They sent a message to NWA, who put it on a flight that night and by noon today, it was delivered to my hotel. Now I can go shopping for wants, rather than needs.

So what does this have to do with looking for MIAs in Palau? Well, if there’s a story to be told enroute to Palau, I may as well tell it. And, technically, I am enroute to Palau, just with a 19 day stop in Thailand.

Hopefully, my traveling travails are over. The next update should be from Palau itself.


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P–MAN VIII Update #1 Friday, January 20, 2006

Hello Everyone!

It’s that time of the year again when a group of volunteers starts heading towards the wide open Pacific. The annual BentProp Project mission to Palau is afoot.

P-MANVIII (Palau- Marine, Army, Navy, eighth mission) is going to be a great adventure this year. We have some leads for the potential execution site/s of some POWs, a few new sightings for aircraft debris and of course interviewing the elders who lived through the war years.

And just so you don’t think spookiness has departed from our midst, we had a couple of events happen that some would say are coincidences. As you know, the BentProp Project doesn’t believe in coincidences anymore.

Pat Scannon (Founder of The BentProp Project, SMF#1) and I were driving from my home Chelsea, MI up to Traverse City in Northern MI. We were enroute to a World War Two, Marine Corps Corsair Squadron reunion. Pat attends many of these reunions so he can to update the Old Codgers and their families about the findings of our searches. It’s also a way to let them know that their efforts way back when are not forgotten.

We were talking about another trip to the National Archives (NARA) and how more aerial photography would be beneficial to our efforts. We have been very fortunate to locate an extensive collection of bomb run photography at NARA as well as many photos from other sources. Although from long ago, these photos have helped us in our searches.

Just at that moment, Pat’s Blackberry announced an incoming email. To paraphrase what Pat read to me, ‘this guy was a photo processor and photographer on B-24s operating off of Anguar in Palau and would we be interested in seeing his collection of photos some day?’ Pat looked at me and asked where Cadillac, MI was. Not only was it near, we had to go through it to get to Traverse City!

Pat called this gentleman back and we set up a meeting that would take place within 2 hours. This man and his wife, Phil and Clara Boucher, hadn’t even left the BentProp webpage by the time Pat made his call. The power of technology.

We got to his house and he showed us his stuff. He had a few boxes of photos that all were treasures. There were no ‘smoking gun’ photos that would show us where to find an airplane, but one photo really got our attention.

It seems that on one mission, a Marine Corsair flew under the B-24. Phil timed it just right and shot a photo. This was taken with one of those really big cameras that you don’t get to look through. He just hit the shutter release when he thought that this ‘under flying Corsair’ would be ‘just right’.