In the fall of 2017, Drs. Jason Raupp (PI) and Jennifer McKinnon (co-PI) jointly led a team to perform an underwater archaeological investigation of a U.S. Army Air Forces B-24H Liberator Heavy Bomber. The bomber, with its crew of 10, was shot down near Montalto, Italy in 1944. During the survey of the area, the team used acoustic imagery technology and photogrammetric survey to record the scattered wreckage and create a 3D model of the site. The combination of high definition photogrammetric models, acoustic imagery, and related virtual documentation minimizes the time spent manually recording sites, and the resulting dataset provides critical planning information, which assists decisions for future recovery efforts.
In February 2018, ECU put together a team of US, Italian, and Australian archaeologists and geophysical specialists in an effort to assist DPAA with recovery efforts of the lost crew of a B-24H on Morgo Island, Italy. The team, as jointly led by Drs. Jennifer McKinnon (PI) and Nathan Richards (co-PI), applied waterborne and terrestrial ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), and metal detection at the site to map the disarticulated remains of the aircraft. Preliminary investigations of the site reveal a complex and highly disturbed context with years of post-crash impact through aquaculture farming and recreational hunting. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the characterization efforts of the project will support future missions for possible recoveries.