another article of interest....
quote:
When Manown’s plane went down that morning, it was traveling at least 300 miles an hour.
If anybody inside had survived the initial hit, they would have had little time to react, much less to escape.
Moreover, nobody aboard the other planes nearby had seen parachutes. Without evidence that the crew might have survived,
the Navy declared Manown and his crew “missing” and “presumed dead”—three men among upward of 80,000 American service members
listed as missing in action after the war was over. Like others consigned to this category, Manown and his crew were understood not to be alive,
but they were not declared dead, either. And unless their remains were somehow found, there would be no formal recognition of their demise
—no bodies to prepare for burial, no funerals to attend, no graves to visit.
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www.smithsonianmag.com
quote:
When Manown’s plane went down that morning, it was traveling at least 300 miles an hour.
If anybody inside had survived the initial hit, they would have had little time to react, much less to escape.
Moreover, nobody aboard the other planes nearby had seen parachutes. Without evidence that the crew might have survived,
the Navy declared Manown and his crew “missing” and “presumed dead”—three men among upward of 80,000 American service members
listed as missing in action after the war was over. Like others consigned to this category, Manown and his crew were understood not to be alive,
but they were not declared dead, either. And unless their remains were somehow found, there would be no formal recognition of their demise
—no bodies to prepare for burial, no funerals to attend, no graves to visit.
Recovering the Lost Aviators of World War II
Inside the search for a plane shot down over the Pacific—and the new effort to bring its fallen heroes home
www.smithsonianmag.com