Vanished; The Sixty-year Search for the Missing Men of World War II
Tim Hetherington (Cover photo) New York: Riverhead Books, 2013. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. [14], 272, [2] pages. Frontis illustration. Maps. Illustrations. Bibliography. Notes. In the fall of 1944, a massive American bomber carrying eleven men vanished over the Pacific islands of Palau, leaving a trail of mysteries. According to mission reports from the Army Air Forces, the plane crashed in shallow water, but when investigators went to find it, the wreckage wasn't there. Witnesses saw the crew parachute to safety, yet the airmen were never seen again. Wil S. Hylton is an American journalist. He is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and has published cover stories for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Harper's, Details, GQ, New York, Outside, and many others. Hylton began publishing articles in The Baltimore Sun as a teenager, and was writing for major magazines by his early twenties. In 1999 he bicycled across Cuba for Esquire, climbed the Ecuadorean Andes for Details, and wrote about Hugh Hefner for Rolling Stone. At 24, Hylton was hired as a Contributing Editor at Esquire, where he wrote about the invasion of Afghanistan, attempts to patent the human genome, and the prosecution of alleged nuclear spy Wen Ho Lee. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Hylton became a Washington Correspondent for GQ, publishing criticism of the war and drafting articles of impeachment for Dick Cheney. He was the first journalist to interview Joe Darby, the whistleblower at Abu Ghraib prison. Hylton is a recipient of the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Journalism by the Medill School of Journalism. For sixty years, the U.S. government, the children of the missing airmen, and a maverick team of scientists and scuba divers searched the islands for clues. They trolled the water with side-scan sonar, conducted grid searches on the seafloor, crawled through thickets of mangrove and poison trees, and flew over the islands in small planes to shoot infrared photography. With every clue they found, the mystery only deepened. Now, in a spellbinding narrative, Wil S. Hylton weaves together the true story of the missing men, their final mission, the families they left behind, and the real reason their disappearance remained shrouded in secrecy for so long. This is a story of love, loss, sacrifice, and faith. of the undying hope among the families of the missing, and the relentless determination of scientists, explorers, archaeologists, and deep-sea divers to solve one of the enduring mysteries of World War II. Derived from a Kirkus review: The story of the quest to discover the fates of the 56,000 American servicemen who served in the Pacific theater during World War II and were declared to be missing in action. New York Times Magazine writer Hylton picked up the story in the wake of scuba diver Pat Scannon's successful efforts to find evidence in the waters around Palau. The diver found the underwater wreckage of three bombers shot down during the battle for Palau, one of the bloodiest in the whole war. One of those shot down was tail gunner Jimmie Doyle, whose family was informed he was missing in 1944 but never had definitive knowledge of his fate. Thanks to Scannon—who sought to “honor the military tradition in his family without abandoning his sense of self”—and the team he established, Jimmie's son, Tommy, and his wife eventually discovered what had happened to the father declared missing many years ago. Scannon's investigations into the submerged wrecks led to the development of his own expertise and the organization of the “BentProp” team of divers, which took on responsibility to help account for the MIAs lost in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Cooperating with the military's Central Identification Laboratory and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command enabled Scannon and his team to successfully track down the story of the sunken B-24s. Hylton draws from a treasure trove of Doyle’s letters, which later provided the impetus for Tommy to seek out Scannon and his investigators. The author skillfully weaves these strands together against a dramatic account of the Pacific theater, particularly the action in the air over Palau and its surroundings. An absorbing read that is well-structured to pull readers through the narrative. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Missing in Action, Pacific Theater, WWII, Army Air Forces, Deep-sea Divers, Pat Scannon, Central Identification Laboratory, Joint POW/MIA, Scuba Divers, Palau, Tim Hetherington
ISBN: 9781594487279
[Book #81987]
Price: $35.00