US airmen remains returned to Obama administration
New Delhi, Apr 14, 2016, DHNS:
Almost seven decades after their deaths in a plane crash, mortal remains of some of the US airmen were sent to the Obama administration on Wednesday for identification and burial in their homeland.
The remains, recovered by an US search team and a private US investigator Clayton Kuhles were handed over to the US defence department at a ceremony in the presence of US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, who left New Delhi for the second leg of his Asia tour.
The remains possibly belong to two different flights — B-24 bomber (nick named Hot as Hell) with eight crew that crashed on January 25, 1944 during a sortie from Kunming to Chabua and a C-109 that crashed on July 17, 1945, travelling from Jorhat to Hsinching with four crew.
According to the US defence department’s estimate 1,312 US military personnel were lost in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theatre during the World War-II. Close to 400 of them are at the crash sites in remote locations in the North East India.
“One set of remains was recovered in the Arunachal Pradesh state between September 12 and November 17, 2015. A second set of remains was unilaterally turned over to the Defense Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency (DPAA) by a third party from the same region,” the US embassy said in a statement.
The search by the US agency was made possible by the NDA government that set aside the UPA government’s decision of not allowing the US professionals to search the area even after agreeing to the US proposal in the first place.
The remains, recovered by an US search team and a private US investigator Clayton Kuhles were handed over to the US defence department at a ceremony in the presence of US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, who left New Delhi for the second leg of his Asia tour.
The remains possibly belong to two different flights — B-24 bomber (nick named Hot as Hell) with eight crew that crashed on January 25, 1944 during a sortie from Kunming to Chabua and a C-109 that crashed on July 17, 1945, travelling from Jorhat to Hsinching with four crew.
According to the US defence department’s estimate 1,312 US military personnel were lost in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theatre during the World War-II. Close to 400 of them are at the crash sites in remote locations in the North East India.
“One set of remains was recovered in the Arunachal Pradesh state between September 12 and November 17, 2015. A second set of remains was unilaterally turned over to the Defense Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency (DPAA) by a third party from the same region,” the US embassy said in a statement.
The search by the US agency was made possible by the NDA government that set aside the UPA government’s decision of not allowing the US professionals to search the area even after agreeing to the US proposal in the first place.
No comments:
Post a Comment