Agency Report
A missing World War II plane has been identified in India’s remote Himalayas nearly 80 years after it crashed with no survivors, following a treacherous search that led to the deaths of three guides.
The C-46 transport aircraft was carrying 13 people from Kunming in southern China when it disappeared in stormy weather over a mountainous stretch of Arunachal Pradesh state in the first week of 1945.
“This aircraft was never heard from again. It simply disappeared,” said Clayton Kuhles, a US adventurer who led the mission after a request from the son of one of those on board the doomed flight.
The expedition took months and saw Kuhles and a team of guides from the local Lisu ethnic group ford chest-deep rivers and camp in freezing temperatures at high altitudes.
Three guides died of hypothermia at an initial stage of the project while camped out during a September snowstorm.
