Robots boost underwater search for WWII remains

At least someone remembers. I hope they are able to find even more lost planes.


For two decades, a volunteer team of historians and scuba divers has methodically searched for missing World War II aircraft in the waters off the Pacific island nation of Palau.
It has been successful but slow going, with up to three years between finds. That is, until the team got its hands on some REMUS 100s: torpedo-shaped, underwater robots that scan vast swaths of the ocean floor in a matter of hours.
This year three of the robots, deployed by scientists from the University of Delaware and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, helped the group find two downed planes within four days, using a method called side-scan sonar.
Mark Moline, director of Delaware's School of Marine Science and Policy, is going back to Palau in March to look for more planes with the volunteer group, called the BentProp Project. Their primary interest is not in the metal wreckage itself but in the remains of servicemen who may still be inside, with an eye toward giving closure to surviving relatives.
"It's sort of a mixed emotion when you find these sites," Moline said. "It's exciting because you found them, but it's also pretty solemn. These guys sacrificed everything for our freedom."
Palau, 600 miles east of the Philippines, was the site of fierce combat between the United States and Japan. When the team finds a crash site that appears to have remains, it refers the information to the U.S. military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which then undertakes recovery operations.
The project began in 1993, under the leadership of Patrick J. Scannon, a physician and chemist who is now chief scientific officer for XOMA, a Berkeley, Calif.-based biotech company.

35 sites found
Every year he devotes his vacation time to looking for missing aircraft, joined by BentProp volunteers with expertise in such disciplines as military history, aviation, and mapping. The largely self-funded, 25-member group conducts extensive archival research before each mission to Palau, seeking likely targets both in the water and in the jungle.
To date, the group has found about 35 U.S. crash sites, six of which have led to military operations that recovered the remains of servicemen. With the addition of the robots, the team expects the pace to speed up dramatically.
The high-tech collaboration began in 2012 when Scannon was in Palau and happened to meet Moline and fellow oceanographer Eric Terrill, director of the Coastal Observing Research and Development Center at Scripps, in San Diego.
The two had been traveling to the islands for monthlong research missions each year since 2010, funded by the Office of Naval Research to study currents, tides, and other conditions.
Intrigued by Scannon's description of his project, the scientists offered to help. The Office of Naval Research agreed it was worthwhile and added a small supplement to Moline's and Terrill's research funding.

Much less sleep
Now Moline estimates he spends a quarter of his time in Palau each year focused on finding crash sites. Terrill thinks the time spent on the joint effort, dubbed Project Recover (http://projectrecover.org), might be even higher.
"Instead of sleeping eight hours a night, you sleep about four," Moline said.
The robots are more than 5 feet long and are made by Hydroid Inc., a Cape Cod-based subsidiary of Kongsberg Maritime in Norway, and can cost up to $500,000 apiece, Moline said. Their sonar systems shoot beams of sound up to 150 feet to either side, so the vehicles can capture a 300-foot-wide image of the seafloor with each pass, chugging along at three or four nautical miles an hour.
The technology relies on the fact that various surfaces reflect sound differently. Mud and sand absorb a lot of it, whereas metal and coral are good reflectors.
It takes a practiced eye to tell metal from coral, especially since in some cases, coral has grown on the wrecks.
"It's not just about the technology, but it's also about having the expertise of world-class oceanographers available," BentProp's Scannon said.
Moline, Terrill, and their university colleagues program the vehicles to travel back and forth in designated target areas, periodically retrieving them to download the image data. If something looks promising, team members follow it up with scuba gear.
On this year's mission, which took place in March, the team's archival research suggested that a TBM Avenger bomber lay somewhere in an area of one square mile.
After several hours of sonar scanning, sure enough - the ghostly image of the downed plane could be seen on screen.
Less than four days later, a second search yielded another find: an F6F Hellcat, a single-seat fighter plane. The team conducted flag ceremonies at both sites and notified the military, which is said to be planning recovery missions next year.
Sonar-emitting robots also have been used in the still-unsuccessful hunt for the missing Malaysian airliner, lost in March with 239 aboard, but that search is taking place in much deeper waters and over a far larger stretch of ocean.
The BentProp team focuses in the coral reef area, with waters no more than 150 feet deep. The robots can cover a square mile in less than a day, whereas searching it with scuba gear alone would take more than a year, Scannon said. That is partly because of poor visibility, and because at that depth, divers can stay underwater for no more than 10 minutes at a time before coming up to refill their tanks, he said.
"It makes a big difference" with robots, Scannon said, "really turning something that is almost physically impossible into something that is now more than reasonable."
The group's research suggests that the remains of more than 70 missing airmen remain to be found among the island's coral reefs, Scannon said.
One of them has a special significance for Moline.
Before he left for Palau in 2013, Moline had told his family about the project. His aunt and his mother responded by sending him a scrapbook and journal that had belonged to his grandfather O. Karl Olander, a Navy chaplain who served in Palau aboard the USS Princeton aircraft carrier.
In his journal, the chaplain had recorded the name of a missing airman whose plane had taken off from the Princeton - a name that Moline learned was already on BentProp's list of search targets.
The team has not yet located that serviceman, but with the help of robots, the underwater sleuths vow that he and his fellow missing comrades will not be forgotten.


Tom Avril, Inquirer Staff Writer Published Friday, November 14, 2014, 1:08 AM