WWII researcher might have found plane of U.S. pilot
Wreckage on the ocean floor near a Japanese island must be from a fighterbomber that crashed in 1945 with an American pilot who is still listed as missing in action, according to a World War II researcher who recently visited the crash site.
The aircraft, lying on coral reef about 70 feet meters down, is the same type of F4U-4 Corsair that 2nd Lt. John McGrath was flying when he crashed off Iriomote Jima in July 1945, researcher Justin Taylan said this week.
“This is the only American aircraft lost at that precise spot,” said Taylan, the founder of Pacific Wrecks, an organization that researches and catalogues WWII crashes.
McGrath, of Troy, New York, is still officially listed by the U.S. military as one of nearly 73,000 American MIAs from WWII. He was 20 when his aircraft disappeared.
Taylan explored the wreckage during a scuba dive in March, along with a Japanese man who discovered the wreck in 1987.
Both wings, the engine and other parts lie approximately 300 yards from shore, a location where American pilots said they saw the plane go down.
Although no identifying markings are visible after 74 years in sea water, the coralencrusted wreckage clearly is from the newer version of the Corsair that McGrath’s Marine Corps aviation unit was flying at the end of the war, Taylan said.
Taylan, a former Pentagon contractor hired to research and find WWII crash sites in Papua New Guinea, became interested in McGrath’s story in 2017, when he was contacted by the son of one of the missing pilot’s old high school classmates.
After researching U.S. military records, Taylan enlisted the help of Kuentai, a Japanese group that searches WWII battlefields in the Pacific for the remains of Japanese and American servicemen.
In March, Taylan traveled to Iriomote Jima, 275 miles southwest of Okinawa. With Kuentai’s help, he met island about 3:25 a.m. in the Englewood section on the city’s South Side. The officer was taken to a hospital, where his condition was stabilized.
A 57-year-old man told police he heard gunshots while he was walking at about 1 a.m. Sunday and noticed he’d been struck once in the buttocks, police said. The man was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital where his condition was stabilized. No arrests had been made.
Two people were shot, one fatally, Saturday night. About 10 p.m., two men, one 43 and the other 21, were standing on a sidewalk when someone in a vehicle started shooting at them, according to police.
The 43-year-old was shot multiple times and was rushed to the University of Chicago Hospital where he later died from his injuries, police said. The other man was shot in the left leg and was taken to the same hospital, where his condition was stabilized, police said. No arrests had been made. residents who witnessed McGrath’s plane crash into the sea on July 21, 1945, during a bombing raid on Japanese defenses in the village of Sonai.
Japanese newspapers in 1988 reported that local officials and the U.S. consul general to Okinawa attended a memorial honoring remains pulled from the crash site. At the time, it was not known whose remains they were. A photo at the time showed the consul general standing over an American flag-draped box said to contain the remains.
As many families of missing veterans have, McGrath’s has provided DNA samples to the agency in the hopes of finding a match, according to one of McGrath’s nephews, Jack Law, a 74-year-old Vietnam War combat veteran and retired New York Army National Guard colonel.
“We’re aggressively bringing closure on this one way or another,” said Law. “We’re not done, but we’re close.”