BentProp Project

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The BentProp Projectis a small all-volunteer group of individuals whose common goal is gathering information that can lead to the location, identification, and repatriation of remains of U.S. service members who were killed in action in the Republic of Palau(in the western Pacific) during WWII, and who are still listed as Missing In Action (MIA). The effort was begun in 1993 by Dr. Pat Scannon. The BentProp team members have backgrounds in SCUBA diving, aviation (with particular focus on WWII-vintage aircraft) and the history of American WWII involvement in the Pacific.

The BentProp team works closely with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), a joint-services organization based at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu, Hawaii. Basically, the BentProp team attempts to locate and identify sites that are associated with known U.S. MIAs, and to provide sufficient information about those sites to JPAC to help them justify mounting official recovery missions.

Of the roughly 200 U.S. aircraft and their crews shot down in Palau between late March 1944 and August 1945, roughly half crashed outside Palau's barrier reef in water that is several thousand feet deep, putting their location and recovery well beyond the technical capability and resources of the BentProp Project. But there are still nearly 100 individuals whose crash sites are thought to be on some of Palau's 200+ islands or in relatively shallow water inside the barrier reef. These individuals are the target of the BentProp Project team's research and field expeditions.

Not affiliated with or sponsored by any private or governmental agencies, the BentProp team's volunteers do extensive research at the College Park, Maryland research facility of the National Achives and Research Administration (NARA) and at various military archives around the world. They also conduct extensive interviews with surviving service members (often at such gatherings as Squadron Reunions), and interviews with Palauan elders who were alive in Palau during the Japanese occupation of that island nation.

The team's field work is done in Palau during yearly expeditions that are usually about a month in duration. Because many U.S. aircraft shot down in Palau in 1944-1945 crashed in surrounding waters, the BentProp team has done extensive underwater searching (all team members are skilled SCUBA divers), using such tools as a towed cesium magnetometer. The team also does extensive land searches in the jungles of Palau, to follow up leads generated through local interviews and the team's archival research.

Success to date includes the location and identification of many previously unknown U.S. crash sites, both underwater and on land. After a 10-year search, for example, in 2004 the BentProp team located the underwater crash site of the last missing B-24 shot down near the Palauan capital city of Koror. This aircraft carried a crew of 11, three of whom parachuted out successfully only to be captured, interrogated, and executed by the Japanese.

Location of the remains of the other eight B-24 crew members who went down with the aircraft has been the objective of a team from JPAC, which mounted a recovery mission in 2005 that was partially successful (some remains were recovered, but diving operations were suspended because of safety considerations at the dive site). JPAC has worked out a plan to deal with the safety issues and plans to mount another mission to attempt to finish recovery of crew members' remains in early 2007.

To date, JPAC has sent recovery teams including forensic anthropologists, archaeologists, and Navy divers to investigate several sites that were located and identified by the BentProp team. Some sites have yielded remains, which have been returned to JPAC's forensic lab in Hawaii for identification.

Information about the BentProp Project and detailed formal reports of many of the team's expeditions can be found at http://www.bentprop.org.