One missing plane from WWII was found in a remote area of the Himalayas in India almost 80 years after his accident. The discovery came after a complicated search in which three guides died.
The missing aircraft is a C-46 transport aircraft. It took off from Kunming, in southern China, on the first week of 1945. was flying with 13 people on board when he disappeared in the middle of a storm in the mountainous state of Arunachal Pradesh.
How was the complicated search
“This plane was never heard from again. It just disappeared,” said Clayton Kuhles, an American adventurer who led the mission at the request of the son of one of the crash victims.
The expedition lasted months. It was carried out by a team of local guides recruited by Kuhles who they had to cross rivers with water to the chest and camp in the middle of frigid temperatures.
Three guides died of hypothermia at the start of the mission during a snow storm.
The team finally found the plane on a snowy mountain last month, and was able to identify the fuselage by the number on the plane’s tail. There were no human remains on the ship..
The joy of the son who asked to find his father
Bill Scherer, the orphaned son who commissioned the mission, said he was “delighted just to know where” his father is. “It’s sad, but happy”he said in an email to AFP from New York.
“I grew up without a father. All I think about is my poor mother, receiving a telegram and discovering that my father is missing and she has stayed with me, a 13-month-old baby,” he added.
Hundreds of US military aircraft went missing in operations in India, China and Burma during World War II, either due to attacks by Japanese forces or due to weather conditions.
I am the Vice President for Research for MIA Recoveries, the organization headed by Clayton Kuhles, the discoverer of the US aircraft wreckage described in this news story. Except for one notable exception, the foreign press reporters, including the author of this particular article of yours, completely botched their coverage, misrepresenting the information Clayton provided them and concocting a blatantly false allegation defaming Clayton’s reputation. Clayton had informed these reporters that three years prior to his latest expedition, in September 2018, three native Lisu tribe hunters had died of hypothermia in the same area as the crash site during a hunting expedition. These hunters had no association with Clayton Kuhles whatsoever. He hadn’t hired them and he never met them.
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Irresponsibly, most reporters completely distorted this statement of his by reporting something absolutely UNTRUE – that three native guides hired by Clayton had died of hypothermia in 2021, variously reporting that they had died in September 2021 as part of preparation for Clayton’s December 2021 expedition or during the December 2021 expedition itself. Suddenly, the reporters’ very creative imagination transformed 3 hunters unassociated with Clayton into 3 guides of his! The truth is that no guides hired by Clayton for any of his highly successful MIA search expeditions to the South Asia region have died, or even suffered a serious injury!
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The totally unfounded implication of these stories is that Clayton’s expedition was responsible for these deaths, something that would sell more papers but had no basis in truth. This is the kind of reportage that opens up these newspapers to a libel suit. What a lack of respect for the standards of fairness and accuracy that the media are supposed to stand for.
We insist that your newspaper issue a correction to this story, making it clear that no guides died as a result of Clayton Kuhles’ expedition, and apologize to Clayton for this totally unfair and baseless accusation.
Gary Zaetz
Vice President for Research, MIA Recoveries