In 2017, East Carolina University’s Program in Maritime Studies began a partnership with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency Partnership and Innovations Directorate (DPAA). In this partnership, we work closely with the agency to carry out its mission, which is to provide the fullest possible accounting for U.S. missing service personnel to their families and the nation. This mission involves the investigation, correlation, excavation, and recovery of sites associated with combat losses of past U.S. conflicts. The work requires us to understand and operate within the confines of forensic archaeological protocols and contribute new and innovative techniques. Projects include underwater missions around the world.
As part of the DPAA relationship, we hosted a two-year fellow, and took on several missions in both Europe and the Pacific. In 2017, we conducted investigations in Montalto, Italy to characterize a crashed WWII aircraft, which was followed by a second similar project in Morgo, Italy in 2018. During the Program’s 2018 summer field school, over a dozen students and faculty searched for lost WWII aircraft in Saipan. In addition, the we partnered with Task Force Dagger Foundation and the Florida Public Archaeology Network to create the Joint Recovery Team to fulfill DPAA missions in 2018 and 2019 DPAA in Saipan.
Italy
In the fall of 2017, myself and Dr. Jason Raupp 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, our 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 that assists decisions for future recovery efforts.
In February 2018, a team of U.S., Italian, and Australian archaeologists and geophysicists led by myself and Dr. Richards assisted DPAA with survey of a lost crew of a B-24H on Morgo Island, Italy. Our team applied waterborne and terrestrial ground-penetrating radar (GPR), 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 by aquaculture farming and recreational hunting practices. Nevertheless, it is hoped that the characterization efforts of the project will support future missions for possible recoveries.
Saipan
The 1944 battle for Saipan resulted in many U.S. losses, including Douglass SBD Dauntless, F6F Hellcat, and TBF/M Avenger aircraft. In 2018, our Program held our summer field school as a DPAA-oriented mission to examine an already-known Avenger site and search for other aircraft losses in Tanapag Harbor, Saipan. Students explored sites using side scan sonar surveys, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) target testing, diver/snorkel ground-truth target testing using visual and metal detection inspections, and archaeological survey and mapping. Our investigations resulted in extensively recording the Avenger site and locating sites such as aircraft wreckage, landing craft, shipwrecks, anchors, moorings, and other WWII-related debris. The 2018 summer field school provided a major step towards understanding the aftermath of the battle for Saipan by identifying World War II remnants in Tanapag Harbor. For more information visit these articles:
- Graduate Students’ Work in Saipan Could Help With Recovery of Servicemen MIA After WWII
- Graduate Students Learning to Become Better Archaeologists, Divers on Saipan Trip
- Abroad in Saipan: Same Field School, Different Perspectives
- Maritime Students go from Surveying WWII Sites Underwater to Local Outreach
Australia
In 2023 a team of archaeologists including Flinders University faculty, staff, and students, ECU faculty and students, and Task Force Dagger Foundation veterans travelled to Queensland, Australia to conduct remote sensing surveys in waters near Moreton Bay in search of a lost WWII aircraft. This survey was followed by target testing to try and locate aircraft wreckage.