TRACING AIRMEN LOST IN WAR

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5281, 18 December 1946, Page 5

TRACING AIRMEN LOST IN WAR

f Press Assn.-

U1TLE HOPE PEdAlSS ! KO MISSING R.A.F. MEN LIKELY TO TURN UP

—By Telearavfo—tJomiriahLl

• WELLINGTON, Last Night. Of t'he 40,000 British and Dc-minions aircrew who werestill on the missing list when the j w:.r ended, not more' than hal| aro expeeted to be traced by the kcarch units now operatingr in all the former war theatres. Th'is' estimate was giyen by Group Captain R. Burges, O.B.E., of the R.A.F. Missing Research and. Inquiry Servipe, in an interview. There was no hope, of course, of any trace being found of the mapy flyers who came down in the sea, and the jungles of South-east Asia axjd the South-west Pacific were almpst as jealous of^ their 'secrets. The wieckage of a crash in these areas was soon overgrown, he said! Soon after V-E Day tliousaii'ds ef inruiries from relatives of missing - airmen began to reaeh Air Ministry axxd an immediate expansion of the existing inquiry serviee took place. Up to last July the .remains of 8000 inen had been traced or proof of theipp death established beyond reas'onable doubt. - • ■ The many cases of the bodies of one or two members of a crew being missing from the wreckage of a crash were usually 'due to the explosion of bombs or petrol. One of the principal difficulties encountered in the ' search for missing airmen was the immensity of the area to be covered. Knowledge- of the target was seldom of much help, as the aircraft might have been . forced off its ifttended track by enemy attack or ba.d weather. " The search units found the loeal . inhabitants eager to voluqteer inforxnation about aircraft that crashed in their areas, but much of their inf ormation was inaeeurate or rfedundant. ' Gerierally their reports were over-optimistie. "They will tell you anything that will please," commented Group Captain Burges. An Example Given As an example of the meagre evidence that the search units often have to work on, he eited the eage of a British aircraft which was' reported to have crashed in France On June 7, 1940. The only elue to the identity of the two bodies found was a small piece of metal, finally identified as an elevator plate from a Fairey Battie. The Department ©f Aeronantical Inspection discovered from its records that the plate was from an aircraft which went missing four days after the date reported by the French villagers, and the crew were thus identified. Apart from a f ew who came out of hiding in Europe just after V-E Day, none of *the missing personnei' had been found alive, said GroupCaptain Burges. Thei-e was no foundation for the" stories that many missing airmen • suffering from loss of memory werewandering about Europe, he said. All patients in hospttals in England and the Continent had been checked. Fur-* thermore, there had been no stteh cases in the Air Fox-oe in England, so. it was improhable that there would' be a numb'er in Europe. Each ease was thoroughly investL gated and in Western Europe alone there were 160 search officers operating. The work would continue until the middle of 1947.