Evolving Partnerships for Underwater Aircraft Research and Survey

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Strides Towards Standard Methodologies in Aeronautical Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Project Recover (PR) is a private non-profit dedicated to helping the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) in their mission to locate, document, identify, and repatriate missing US servicemen remains from overseas. A PR team, under contract with DPAA, conducted dive and remote sensing surveys to locate four aircraft along the west coast of Italy in 2018. Our primary goal was to positively identify the wreck of a WWII-era A-20 (it was discovered during a previous year’s DPAA remote sensing survey).

Over the course of our investigation on site, which included measuring, recording, and creating a photogrammetrical model under low visibility conditions, we concluded in-field that the aircraft was not an A-20 as previously suspected and re-directed efforts to find the actual A-20 wreck. The combined expertise of enthusiast/professional team members, and this type of partnership, is well-suited to respond to an increased need to map US aircraft wrecks underwater.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Strides Towards Standard Methodologies in Aeronautical Archaeology

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 665