P-MAN X Update #04 - The first wave of BentProp arrives
24 February 2008 - Sunday

We made it. Pat, Grover, and I arrived at 10:45 (about 45 minutes late) last night, and Flip met us at the airport with our loaner van, courtesy of Mason Whipps. This morning the hotel's Internet connection is down, so at the moment I'm working on this report off-line.

Even though it was 11:45 when we made it back to town from the airport last night, Dave and Margie kept Bandidos open just for us, and we hung out there telling war stories and toasting Bob Holler with Bandidos' special headliner drink, the "Bob's Holler."

We checked out of Bandidos and into the hotel at about 0100, got to bed about 0200, and were up at about 0630 for breakfast in the ready room. This morning (Sunday) we spent the morning reviewing the formal Proposal that we sent in advance to various Palauan and U.S. authorities to detail the plans we have for the various sites that we want to investigate during this trip.

After lunch we headed out to T-Dock to meet JPAC's Capt. George Mitroka for a quick boat ride out to the barge from which the JPAC underwater recovery team has been conducting operations on the B-24 site for about the last 6 weeks. We met most of the divers and support crew (several of whom were also on the two previous missions) and got to discuss how this mission (the third and possibly the last on the B-24) is going. Each of the three missions has yielded results. You may recall that this B-24 had a crew of 11, three of whom parachuted out after it was hit, and the other eight of whom went down with the aircraft. The three survivors were immediately captured, taken to the military police headquarters on Ngatpang, and within a few days they were executed. Their burial site is another of the targets we've been trying to locate for several years.

According to a local newspaper, the underwater recovery team has moved from B-24 "Site B" (the forward fuselage area) to "Site C." This third site, an additional debris field, is separated by a few hundred meters from the parts of the site that we found in 2004.

According to another local newspaper, the recovery team that was investigating a TBM Avenger crash site on Peleliu (one that we located and identified two years ago) did not recover remains there but did recover a set of dog tags. That site was closed a couple of weeks ago and that recovery team has gone back to JPAC in Hawaii. Dog tags can often help to confirm the identity of a site...

When we arrived back at the hotel there was a message that had been dropped off about an hour earlier by our archaeologist friend Jolie Liston. The note was wrapped around a small package. The note said that she's leaving tonight for Miami, where there are some opthomalogical specialists who may be able to help her with some serious vision problems. Sure hope so. She might be back in a week or so. In the package, offered for our use in her absence, were her cell phone and her car key. Is that a cool friend, or what? The team hasn't seen her since last year.

We went to dinner with several JPAC/MUDSU guys (the underwater recovery team). They're scheduled to head home in about a week and there's a lot of information to swap with them. At dinner the process of dumping info back and forth almost swamped us. We're going to spend as much time as we can over the next week showing each other new stuff. Tomorrow, if we can, we'll at least make a courtesy call at the Historical Preservation Office, then get together with JPAC - and get together with team member Joe Maldangesang for the first time. He's been up north for the last several days, involved with the funeral of his sister, who passed away last week.

We headed out to the airport to at least say hi-bye to Jolie around 12:30 tonight before her flight leaves. Wound up getting a great debriefing from her on the latest stuff, and made it back to the hotel only a little past 0200. We wish her the best in Miami, and hope she'll be back in the saddle in time to do a little jungle crawling with us before we leave in late March.

On the way back to the hotel, we picked up Jolie's car at the north end of the Koror-Babelthuap bridge, and Grover stopped for a bacon cheeseburger at Bem Ermii. He was starting to feel bad about having gone a whole day since we arrived without stopping at Bem Ermii - didn't seem to bother him that it was two o'clock in the morning...

The internet connection is back up - sort of - so might as well send this off and get to bed.

- Reid
 

Return to Progress Reports Index