The U.S. Government has asked British archaeologists for help in locating the remains of a U.S. pilot whose plane crashed in the dense woodlands of England in 1944.
Eighty years after the Allies fought to defeat Hitler’s Nazi army, there is still a desire to bring closure and honor to those fallen in battle.
The crash site is near East Anglia, a rural area that served as a headquarters for the Allies in the 1940s. The unnamed pilot’s plane went down after the controls on the B-17 he was flying failed, and it crashed carrying 12,000 pounds of explosives. Cotswold Archaeology will spend six weeks excavating the site.
“This excavation will not be easy — the crash crater is waterlogged and filled with 80 years’ worth of sediment, the trees and undergrowth are thick, and all soil must be meticulously sieved to hopefully recover plane ID numbers, personal effects, and any human…
