‘It’s a question OF HONOUR’
An estimated 27,500 American servicemen from the Second World War are missing in the Mediterranean, and the bodies of 8,000 are believed to be recoverable, Agence France-Presse says. “It’s a question of honour for the American armed forces: you never leave someone on the battlefield. It’s a promise we keep, even today, 75 years later,” Simon Hankinson, the U.S. consul general in Marseille, told AFP. Just off the coast of Corsica, French divers are assisting a U.S. team, combing through the wreckage of a P-47 Thunderbolt.
1. French military divers examine the wreck of the P-47 Thunderbolt, which crashed in 1944. The divers and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) collected fragments from the plane for analysis; 2. Discovered in the 1980s, the plane’s wreckage and number were photographed by a diver in 2012, the VOA reported; 3. What appears to be the remnants of a propeller lies on the seabed. Another P-47 lies just 30 metres away, but its pilot ejected safely so it is not subject to analysis; 4. A U.S. army officer examines fragments of the plane hauled from the bottom. Divers use enormous tubes to suck material up from the sea floor; 5. A DPAA staffer uses a wire screen to search for bone fragments. DNA analysis is used to identify pilots listed as missing in action. Where possible, the DPAA returns remains to families and provides a military funeral.