B-24J #42-100184
Recovered Nov-Dec 2023

Investigator’s Note:  I initially reached and identified this crash site on 07 Dec 2010.  Family members of the personnel aboard this aircraft contacted me in 2011 and multiple additional times since then and asked me to lead a recovery mission to the crash site and try to recover remains and personal artifacts of the men.  This would mean recruiting a much larger team and remaining on site long enough to do a methodical, 100% excavation of the crash site.  In 2022, the family members became aware that the US Dept of Defense had cancelled all further MIA recovery missions in the former China-Burma-India theater of WWII and declined to send a team to recover this crash site, citing various reasons.  Most often cited by them was the “political instability” present in the area.  Armed insurgent organizations from Burma and India often harbor in the jungles on the India side of the India-Burma border, throughout the Dihing River Valley and northwards towards the border with Tibet.  The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has been waging an armed insurrection in northern Burma since the 1940’s, and they use these border jungles as a safe haven when being pursued by the Burmese Army.  A budget for the recovery mission was funded and the mission was launched on 27 Nov 2023.