Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00GG0CWKO | Format: EPUB
Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II Description
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. Some of their relatives whispered that they had returned to the United States in secret and lived in hiding. But they never explained why.
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.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 9 hours and 52 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Recorded Books
- Audible.com Release Date: November 5, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00GG0CWKO
Pure military history has never appealed to me. Although I enjoy history, I have no military background and war stories and battles have never particularly interested me.
"Vanished" is different. I found it to be a real page-turner. Reading during lunch turned into reading at the kitchen table after lunch to find out what happened next. That's because "Vanished" isn't pure military history, but the story of the personal quest of Pat Scannon to unravel the mystery of a B-24 bomber that disappeared with its crew on September 1, 1944 in the Pacific near Palau, colored by the personalities and circumstances of the crew and their families and put into context by the strategy and actions of the Japanese and U.S. military forces.
Hylton's saga resonated for me, having visited Papua New Guinea and Midway Island and toured the remnants of the Japanese and U.S. World War II tunnels, bunkers, tanks, gun batteries, pillboxes, ammunition storage huts and memorials. My Pacific travel included diving in Fiji, Tahiti, and Papua New Guinea, so I could also identify with the location and recovery process of the wrecks and artifacts Scannon discovered, explored and recovered.
Scannon's motivation to uncover the details of the vanished bomber and crew was driven by the need of the families of the airmen to know what happened to the men and, hopefully, recover remains to officially put to rest. This process took ten years, thousands of dollars, and liaisons with government organizations and veterans. Scannon went from an interested observer with a 1993 expedition to find a Japanese trawler sunk by George H. W. Bush in July 1944 to a man driven by the need to identify and explore military planes sunk in the Pacific to find soldiers missing or killed in action.
"Vanished" tells the story of Pat Scannon, doctor and entrepreneur, who went to Palau on a lark to do some scuba diving, find George H.W. Bush's first combat kill, and maybe just look for some lost gold. While there, he ran across some B-24 wreckage, and soon became hooked on finding other lost combat aircraft. After meeting with the families of downed aircrews, his interest morphed into a compassionate obsession with finding the remains of those lost crews.
The author brings us a tale that's interesting, but not compelling. Most of the book is spent tracking the lives of one aircrew up until the point that they were shot down. Working from wartime letters and modern interviews with survivors - everything is thoroughly documented - Hylton paints a picture of the crew's love interests and daily lives. There is some description of combat, but very little, so the focus is primarily on the mundane. The story transitions from flashbacks to Scannon's broadening efforts to find a missing B-24 and get the military involved. There's a lot of detail here also, which is necessary to understand how things come to a conclusion, but there is very little to get excited about.
One thing the book really needs is more photos, maps, and graphics. It's a fairly short book, and I get the feeling that some areas were stretched out to keep it from being too short, so there's definitely room to add some helpful pictures. Many folks today have no idea what a B-24 looks like, and the only photos here are tiny. A cut-away drawing of a B-24 would be useful to help readers understand the crew positions. The only underwater photo is uncaptioned, but shows an aircraft that's clearly *not* a B-24.
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