TIGHAR

Historic Aircraft Recovery and Preservation => General discussion => Topic started by: Monty Fowler on February 06, 2012, 06:32:32 PM

Title: A different kind of wreck recovery
Post by: Monty Fowler on February 06, 2012, 06:32:32 PM
I admire what these guys are doing - more importantly, how they are doing it - http://news.yahoo.com/malaysian-jungle-adventurers-solve-wwii-mysteries-084802195.html (http://news.yahoo.com/malaysian-jungle-adventurers-solve-wwii-mysteries-084802195.html)

Malaysian jungle adventurers solve WWII mysteries

They trek for days through crocodile-infested swamps and up rain-lashed mountain jungles, but the members of the Malaya Historical Group are not seeking treasure or ancient artefacts. Instead, they're after rusty wreckage.

Over the past decade, the six amateur Malaysian military historians have helped locate the confirmed or suspected crash sites of 30 World War II aircraft -- helping bring closure for the families of more than 40 missing British and American air crews.

Nearly 70 years after the end of the war, at least 100 British and American aircraft wrecks are believed scattered across the jungles of India, Thailand and Malaysia, along with the remains of their crews.

As well as the battles for the Pacific Islands, allied forces waged war against Japanese forces whose regional conquests included previously British-held Singapore and Malaysia -- known then as Malaya.

"What we do is to find whichever wrecks are in Malaysia and help identify them so that relatives can get closure after waiting for more than six decades," says the group's leader Shaharom Ahmad.

During the week, Shaharom, 37, is a technical engineer with Malaysian state news agency Bernama.

But he and his fellow war buffs have carried out 40 weekend expeditions over the last decade, searching for the wrecks of long-missing allied aircraft that crashed or were shot down.

Such sites "are a crucial part of the story of the war in the Pacific," said military historian Christopher McDermott, who works for the US Joint Prisoner of War/Missing In Action Accounting Command (JPAC).

Once found, sites are left undisturbed but meticulously photographed and the pictures are uploaded to their website, mhg.mymalaya.com.


 
Title: Re: A different kind of wreck recovery
Post by: Irvine John Donald on February 06, 2012, 09:30:24 PM
Thanks Monty for a great link. I think what they are doing, particularly with the burials and notification to next of kin is really admirable and commendable. Brings a real human story into it.