Found! WWII Pilot!
Frozen WWII airman found in glacier
Los Angeles
October 20, 2005 - 11:28AM
A frozen body believed to be of a WWII pilot has been found protruding from a glacier in California some 60 years after his plane crashed, officials told AFP.
Climbers found the ice-encased corpse on Sunday in the western US state's Sierra Nevada mountains, which lie about 300km north of Los Angeles, said Alexandra Picavet, a national parks spokeswoman.
"Two people were ice climbing in the Kings Canyon National park when they discovered the head and shoulders sticking out of the glacier," she told AFP of the body that still had a military parachute attached to it.
"Glaciers are very liquid, they're constantly moving, the glacier has deposited this person at the bottom of it," she said.
The body was found at an altitude of about 3,900 metres at the weekend, but recovery crews have not yet been able to reach the remote site.
"It's going to take some forensic efforts to find out who he is," she said, adding however that the body appeared to be that of a World War II airman, possibly an occupant of a training plane that crashed in the area 63 years ago.
"There was a plane crash, into this glacier in 1942. Four bodies were recovered five years later by the army, but we cannot definitively say that he is from that crash," Picavet said, adding that the military's POW-MIA or Missing in Action unit would make the determination.
- AFP