Navy OKs Effort to Find Remains of 9 Aviators

Navy Secretary William L. Ball III, reversing the decision of several predecessors, has authorized an attempt to recover the remains of nine U.S. aviators who died in a plane crash in a remote part of Canada in 1948.

Cmdr. Jeff Zakem, a spokesman, said Wednesday that Ball “had reviewed the complete file and granted approval for a recovery mission, to be attempted sometime next summer” in a mountainous area of Vancouver Island, Canada.

Raymond H. Swentek, himself a former Navy aviator, has campaigned for 20 years to get the Navy to recover the remains of his brother and the other eight fliers who died in the crash of their P2V Neptune on Nov. 4, 1948. He credited personal appeals to various senators and to the office of Vice President George Bush for Ball’s decision to review the matter.

“I’m floating on the clouds right now,” Swentek said late Wednesday. “I can’t believe it’s finally going to happen.”

The plane crashed into the side of a dead volcano in the Canadian wilds in an area that is covered by snow virtually year-round. The wreckage was discovered, only by accident, in 1961.

Swentek traveled to the crash site himself in 1985 and found small skeletal remains. That evidence was enough to persuade the Naval Medical Command to back his plea for a recovery expedition.

But the command’s backing was not enough to persuade then-Navy Secretary John F. Lehman, who rejected Swentek’s request in 1986.

The Navy maintained that it honored the victims properly when a search party in 1962 made it to the area, recovered a small number of bones and buried them at the site under concrete after erecting a plaque.