- Tuesday, May 07, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
A MISSING plane from the era of World War II (1939-45) has been found in India’s remote Himalayas nearly eight decades ago after it crashed with zero survivors following a hunt in a treacherous high-altitude zone.
The C-46 transport jet had 13 people on board who were flying from Kunming in southern China when it disappeared in rough weather over a mountainous stretch in India’s north-easternmost state of Arunachal Pradesh in the early part of 1945.
“This aircraft was never heard from again. It simply disappeared,” Clayton Kuhles, an American adventurer who led the mission after a request from the son of one of those who were on the ill-fated flight, told AFP.
During the expedition, Kuhles and a team of guides from the local Lisu ethnic group crossed deep rivers and camped in extreme cold temperatures.
The mission was not without dangers. In 2018, three Lisu hunters died of hypothermia in the same area when an unseasonal September snowstorm hit them, Kuhles said. Two others “barely escaped alive”.
“My Lisu guides and porters were very uneasy about our high camp location,” he said.
However, the mission eventually went ahead and the team spotted the plane on a snow-covered mountain top last month. They identified the wreckage by the tail number.
Kuhles led the search by Bill Scherer, whose officer father was on board the doomed plane. He was a 13-month-old baby then.
“All I can say is that I am overjoyed, just knowing where he is. It is sad but joyous,” Scherer told AFP by email from New York.
“I grew up without a father. All I can think of is my poor mother, getting a telegram and finding out her husband is missing and she is left with me, a 13-month-old baby boy.”
Hundreds of American military jets went missing around the theatre of operations in India, China and Myanmar during the Second Great War.
While hostile fire from Japanese forces destroyed some aircraft, Kuhles said the majority are believed to have been hit by ice damage, hurricane-force winds and other severe weather challenges.
