A Downed Grumman F6F Hellcat in Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 2018 East Carolina University and Task Force Dagger Foundation partnered with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to survey for lost WWII aircraft from the Battle for Saipan (1944). Under the direction of ECU archaeologists, a team of veterans from Task Force Dagger Foundation located a crashed aircraft that was identified as a Grumman F6F Hellcat in 27 feet of water in Saipan’s lagoon. The aircraft was preliminarily recorded in 2018 and in 2019, the team returned to conduct an excavation of the site for correlation and recovery. The pandemic disrupted plans in 2020-2021, but in 2022 the team returned to continue recovery excavation of the site. This presentation will provide an overview of this multi-partner project and the results of the mission thus far.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow