Among the trees of a national forest park near Frankfurt, Germany, survey lines, pin flags and neatly aligned squares of excavation dotted the ground in precise rows.
With ground-penetrating radar, metal detectors, mesh and a host of other tools, a team of undergraduate students and teaching assistants, led by faculty from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, were hard at work investigating a World War II bomber crash site.
The group, directed by IUP Department of Anthropology faculty members Andrea Palmiotto and William Chadwick, worked in conjunction with the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine Inc. through the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. The agency works to find “the fullest possible accounting for missing personnel from past conflicts of the United States.”
According to the agency, as of May, more than 81,000 Americans remain missing from WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Gulf Wars and other conflicts. About 75% of the losses were in the Indo-Pacific region, and more than 41,000 of the missing are presumed lost at sea.
This was the third year that a group visited Germany to conduct field studies at WWII plane crash sites.
Eighteen U.S. team members participated, including three IUP students and one alum. They excavated material, conducted radar scans and studied the landscape to glean details about what happened at the…
