Update # 5

Hello Everyone!

We’re back from Peleliu. What a great side trip. And we might go back as we still have some leads to track down.

Up until yesterday, we have been doing a lot of housekeeping on old, known sites. All new to us, the searchers and film crew, but revisits for Pat. Peleliu was going to be different. We were going to look around for a SB2C Helldiver that was reported to be down, but has never been identified. An engine was known to exist on one ridge, and a wing on another. The wing was reported by a friend of Pat’s. We wanted to expand the debris field and find out whose plane this was. But first we had to get there.

We could go by plane: $40.00/person one way, but only 30 minutes to get there. And on our schedule. We could go by ferry at $4.00/person. Schedule flexible but they thought we would leave by early afternoon. And 4 hours to get there.(I think they meant for us to be flexible with them and not the other way around.) We could charter our normal boat at $275/day. Our schedule, 1 ½ hours to get there, but have to be back by 5pm. What’s a group to do?

We had a wonderful plane ride over to Peleliu. Palau is beautiful by air. All the colors of the reefs and islands really coordinate well with the ocean. And Matt our pilot pointed out some wrecks near Peleliu that might be worth a trip to in the future. Matt is an ex-pat Aussie living in Palau full time.

We landed and were greeted by Tangie Hesus. He is the one man show on Peleliu keeping the memories of The Marines’ sacrifices alive. He’s tour guide, curator, museum director and man about town. He takes excellent care of all the visitors he can. It doesn’t hurt that his Auntie owns one of the hotels (8 rooms) on the island and a couple of stores (hotel gift shop sized) and restaurant (communal dining room). We checked in the hotel, then drove to Pope Ridge to start our trek.

Pope’s Ridge is named after Capt. Pope, USMC, a Medal of Honor recipient. The ridge used to be known as Walt’s Ridge and before that as Hill 100. It’s Pope’s now. It’s also being taken away. The beginning of this ridge line is also a quarry for building materials. Slowly but surely, this hill that so many fought on, and died on, is disappearing. Along with the coral being taken away are the bones of some soldiers who never came home. Bone is still found routinely on Peleliu, both American and Japanese.

Right at the start of Horseshoe Valley, there is a helmet full of bones. They were recently collected by the crew working the quarry. They have enough integrity to put them aside, rather than turn them into paving materials. At least this crew does.

We headed into the jungle about 100 yards in from the quarry and worked our way up to the known engine site. Along the way we found some bits and pieces including a tail wheel assembly and some aluminum aircraft skin. We climbed further up the ridge and found a main landing gear wheel. No tire, just the wheel assembly. A little further up was the engine. So far, nothing really new. We just needed to identify which Helldiver this stuff came from. As we poked around the engine, it became obvious that this wasn’t a Helldiver engine. This came from a TBM Avenger. Now this was becoming interesting.

We walked the ridge line and found one more piece of aircraft, an aileron. We came down the valley and found a section of wing, with a machine gun mount (empty). We found a lot of war debris including a number of unexploded ordnance. As I stated last year, unexploded ordnance is everywhere. You can’t help but step near it. Just to lay your minds to rest, we all got back safely!

We searched more and more and wider and wider.

We had given Tangie a radio so we could be in contact with him for two things: extract us at the end of the day, and the most important thing, lunch. His Auntie made us sack lunches that tasted better than anything. Well, almost anything. Our normal mode of operation is to split breakfast making duties, and Val makes a lunch for us most days. Her lunches taste better than anything. Well, almost anything.

After lunch, the hunt resumed. We walked up and down the draw and on the ridges. All told, we found a wing section, aileron, engine, wheel and some bits and pieces. None of the pieces conclusively came from a Helldiver and lots looked like they came from an Avenger. But we never found the Helldiver wing that Pat’s friend Eric found.

At the end of the day, we decided to look at the engine a little more. We also started poking around the area and the wheel we found sticking up out of the ground was still attached to the landing strut. This was definitely an Avenger. But which one?

We used our handy dandy radio to call Tangie and he picked us up and dropped us off at the hotel. During the ride to the hotel, we told Tangie about our intentions for the next day and he asked us if we would be interested in seeing a piece of airplane with Navy written on it with a number too. And a wing. They’re also close to where we were looking today. What!??? After some chatting Tangie told us what he knew and we slated that into our search pattern for the next day.

Dinner was slated for 7pm at his Auntie’s. It was now 5. We had a little slack time, had some cold refreshing beverages with snacks, got cleaned up and tried to figure out what we had seen and what Tangie had just revealed. Although we have a lot of reference material with us, the aircraft books we had on the Avenger were back on Koror and as we hadn’t found the Helldiver wing yet, the Helldiver book wasn’t much use to us. Grrrrrrrrrrr.

Dinner was fantastic. Local delicacies prepared with Peleliuan recipes. The food was tasty and plentiful. The communal dinning room was crowded and we were able to meet some gents who were on the island for scuba diving. One was from England and 2 were from Italy. We enjoyed each other’s stories.

Off to bed as we were getting up early so we could accomplish the impossible: identify 2 airplane crash sites that had been elusive for 59 years.

Peleliu is a coral mount with jungle on it. Not so thick that it’s impassable, but pretty tough going. We were dealing with temperatures in the 90’s with high humidity. But we had the benefit of the jungle which cools things down a bit. Also, you don’t get reflected heat from the coral as the jungle absorbs the solarons (Bill, do you like that technical of a term?).

But the soldiers and Marines on Peleliu during the war had to endure 100+ temps and the island looked more like a moonscape. With all the shelling of the island prior to and during the battles, most of the jungle was stripped away. It’s amazing to see pictures of where we were look like ski slopes back then. I’ll try to send side by side pictures when I get back so you can see the amazing transformation.

Sunrise, clean up, meditate, hike over to breakfast (another scrumptious meal), hike back and Tangie took us directly to the tail section of an aircraft, that said Navy and had a bureau number on it. A bureau number is a Navy identification number for a specific airframe in the Navy inventory. This was exciting. He told us how to find the wing. We hiked that direction, into an area with deep crevices in the bottom of the valley and there sitting on the side of the valley was a Helldiver wing. At least we think it might be a Helldiver wing.

We broadened our search and combed hither and yon around this site. We found another piece of wing wreckage up, over and slightly down the ridge where we had found the wing. We were back in the valley that contained all the other pieces. Coincidentally, we were also 150 feet from the tail section Tangie lead us to in the morning. So the day before, when we came up the valley, we probably stopped 50 short of the tail section. Funny how things work out.

We decided to see if there was a number on the landing gear that was by the engine. We just wanted more info to identify which airplane, and consequently whose airplane this was. We looked at some more of the landing gear and as it was a confined area, some of us expanded our search area. They found a number of other pieces, and a 50 cal machine gun buried into the coral hillside. Now this is a find and almost certainly looks like a combat loss.

During these two days, we did two flag ceremonies to honor these fallen aviators and their crews. IF and when an identification is made, Pat likes to give the families of these men a flag and video of the ceremony for their closure.

We finally called it a day, headed to our pickup point and Tangie came to take us back to the airport. But first, a quick stop at his museum’s new location. The old museum was in a Quonset hut that was not the sturdiest building around. And this museum held many artifacts from the war, as well personal mementoes from before, during and after the war. The new building is a structure built by the Japanese during their occupation, that sustained direct hits from Navy 16 inch guns. They’ve left the shell holes as they were and glassed over the opening. And the inside has been updated with paint and interior walls. Very nicely done. You all need to take a trip to Peleliu and take in all the sites.

Matt was right on time to pick us up for our return to Koror. He swung the airplane back over the wreck sites on the reef, showed us some great scuba areas, and we had a pleasant flight back to Koror.

A quick trip to the Truck Stop for a milkshake and a burger. This trailer restaurant is called BemErmii. It means ‘Come and taste.’ After a hard day on the coral hills of Peleliu, this was the world’s best cheeseburger.

We gathered in our ready room and poured through all our reference materials. What we have in those valleys appears to be two different aircraft crashes. One certainly is an Avenger and the other appears to be a Helldiver. But, we have a lot of Avenger parts, and we only have the Helldiver wing. So, we’ll confer with the appropriate authorities and let them make the determination about the crews. But to us, it looks as if we may have found the final resting spots of 3-5 air crewmen from the U.S. Navy.

We all fell into bed early as we had another day scheduled for trekking. This time to Babelthuap to track down some executed airmen and frogmen. But that story starts next time.

A few new addresses have been added to my list since I started this series. If you are missing any of the series, let me know and I’ll resend them to you individually. Okay, back at ya.

Blue SKies, Flip