We recently featured an excellent article by Brooks Rowlett on Operation Hula, the planned joint US-Soviet invasion of the Kuriles. US units in Attu, including PV-1 Venturas, were listed in the order of battle. One of those PV-1s, missing for over half a century, has now been found. A local historian in Kamchatka, Ms. Alla Paperno, has led officials to the crash site of US Navy PV-1 Ventura which took off from Attu on 25 March 1944. A joint US-Russian investigation team visited the site in early August. While some remains were recovered, the team recommended a full-scale investigation next summer, when warmer weather and the lack of ice and now would facilitate the search for the rest of the crew. A PV-1 normally carried a crew of seven. The plane was one of five which took off from Attu, in the Aleutian Islands, on the "Empire Express," a reconnaissance and bombing mission over Japanese bases on the northern Kurile Islands. In the face of extremely bad weather and hazardous flying conditions, only one of the five planes in the flight was able to successfully complete the mission. Of the others, one crashed soon after takeoff, two were unable to reach the target area, and one failed to return. It is this plane, about which there has been no information for 56 years, that was located on the slope of the Mutnovskiy volcano in Kamchatka. Thanks to Brooks Rowlett BT Back to The Naval Sitrep #19 Table of Contents Back to Naval Sitrep List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2000 by Larry Bond and Clash of Arms. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com