Investigation of a WWII-era aircraft crash site

Over the first two months of 1944, US forces invaded the Japanese controlled Marshall Islands in the central Pacific. That campaign, Operation Flintlock, is considered significant in the eventual defeat of the Japanese by allied forces in the Pacific Theatre of WWII.

But it was not without cost. Late in the morning of February 1944, two F6F-3 Hellcat fighters began a run on an ammunition dump on Bigej Island at Kwajalein Atoll. As the lead pilot set the dump on fire, his wingman, following in close and below, was unable to avoid the blast. The plane, spun into the lagoon at high speed and its pilot remained unaccounted for.

In 2011, through extensive research and analysis of war time records, members of the Kwajalein Missing in Action Project (KMP), located wreckage consistent with an F6F-3 fighter plane off Bigej Island. In 2023, KMP partnered with the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine Inc. in support to the US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to further investigate the crash site. DPAA is a small US Department of Defense Agency whose mission is to provide the fullest possible accounting for US personnel missing from armed conflicts around the world.

Fathom Archaeology, along with Professional Diving Services (PDS) worked with the KMP in July/August 2023 to completed the investigation. Jane was the Lead Archaeologist responsible for the investigation strategy and reporting the results to the DPAA.