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Scannon had already located the other two B-24s, but the last one became a kind of holy grail because it had proved so elusive. Finding these old planes requires the physical stamina to dive and climb through the jungle day after day, but it also takes good detective work. "We knew roughly where it had gone in from pilots that we interviewed and after-action reports from that mission," said Scannon, chief researcher at Xoma Corp., a San Francisco biotechnology firm. "I had spent the first few years tracking down what I learned from the veterans. But last year, we did an intensive search of the National Archives." The archives, in Maryland, turned up canisters of photos taken by crewmen on other B-24s to assess bomb damage on Koror. Some of them revealed telling clues, such as bombs splashing in the water in clusters. That pattern meant a plane had been struck by anti-aircraft fire, because the crews were trained to dump all of their bombs at once if the plane was hit. In some of the photos, the searchers could also make out pieces of a burning plane falling to earth, allowing them to calculate where the debris might have landed. BentProp members thought the B-24 had gone down on the southern side of Koror, but the photos convinced them that it actually crashed off the other side. The group's native guide, Joe Maldangesang, then started asking local spear fisherman if they knew of any wrecks in that area. One said he'd seen a propeller near a coral head and showed the BentProp team. Under the propeller was another, and below that, other parts of the plane. The divers didn't look for bone fragments or uniform remnants, but they never do. "When we think we're on a site where there could be human remains, we kind of back off," Joyce said. "This obviously hadn't been touched." Identifying remains is the job of another group, with which BentProp works closely, called JPAC, or Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, based in Hawaii. JPAC researchers recover what they can and take it to their forensic lab, the largest in the world, to do DNA analysis and other tests to identify MIAs. Until that's done and the families are contacted, the B-24 crew will remain unidentified, including the men who were executed. Scannon and Joyce said they knew who the men are, but that they wouldn't discuss identities or even the day the plane was shot down because they don't want to intrude on JPAC's work. This kind of respect for veterans permeates BentProp, whose members see their yearly missions to Palau as more a noble crusade than a hobby. Of the 100 planes in shallow enough water to be located, about 85 are missing and some 65 airmen are still listed as MIA. "Nobody else is looking for these people," Joyce said. "Our feeling is that if you have the resources available, you ought to go beyond just remembering." Despite their Pittsburgh connections, Joyce didn't meet Scannon until 1997, when Joyce's son-in-law, Greg Kovacs, an electrical engineer at Stanford University, introduced them. The two men hit it off. Scannon, whose father landed at Normandy and whose Hungarian mother spied for the Allies, had a keen sense of military history that appealed to Joyce, a military aviation buff. Joyce was fascinated by Scannon's treks to Palau. "I was just hooked," he said. "Pat's a very compelling guy. He's soft-spoken, but very intense. From that point on, I felt I would like to be part of this." Joyce said he pestered Scannon for several years to go on a trip. When he learned that Kovacs was going in 2000, he asked to tag along. The expedition didn't turn up any wrecks, but Joyce now shared Scannon's obsession. His wife, Beth, doesn't go along -- "She's not a diver or a climber," Joyce said -- but he plans to return every year for as long as he can. "The assumption is that we'll keep doing this until we can't do it anymore," he said. For Scannon, finding planes is a way of showing appreciation. After he and his wife, Susan, accompanied the 1993 expedition to find the ship Bush had sunk, they hired a guide to find other wrecks. One of them was the wing of another B-24. "I can't tell you the emotion of how I felt looking at this wing that nobody knew anything about," he said. "It made me want to find out what happened to the crew, not only of this plane but all the other airmen who disappeared. Our goal is to recognize that these airmen sacrificed their lives for their country, and someone should remember it." On the day of their most recent discovery, the BentProp team conducted a flag ceremony aboard a boat to honor the B-24 crew 70 feet below. They held up the U.S. and Palauan flags, and Scannon quietly read part of "For the Fallen," a 1914 poem by Lawrence Binyon: They went with songs to the battle, they were young, Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted; They fell with their faces to the foe. They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them. (Torsten Ove can be reached at tove@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2620.) Copyright 2006 nopukob.com