By Sam Hemingway, Free Press Staff Writer • February 17, 2009
Gary Zaetz (third from left) and Oken Tayeng (far right) stand in front of the wing of Hot as Hell in remote north´ern India. The other men belong to Tayeng’s family. (Courtesy Photo)
A team of Defense Department investigators has reached the crash site of a World War II-era B-24 bomber in remote northeast India and has begun a search for the human remains of its long-lost crew, including two Vermonters.
“I got word this morning that they’re now at the site,” Larry Zaetz, the brother of one of the lost airmen, 1st Lt. Irwin “Zipper” Zaetz of Burlington, said Monday. “We don’t know what the excavators will be able to find, but we’re very hopeful.”
Larry Zaetz lives in Florida but was a longtime resident of Burlington. He was the younger brother of Irwin Zaetz. The two boys and another brother and sister lived with their Russian immigrant parents on Loomis Street.
The bomber, nicknamed “Hot as Hell,” was on a military supply run between airstrips in India and China when it went missing in stormy weather over the Himalayan mountains Jan. 25, 1944 and was never heard from again.
American climber Clayton Kuhles, using information gleaned from a hunter guide in the region, found the crash site in 2006 in the mountains near the village of Damrah, population 200. Relatives of the plane’s eight-man crew have been pushing for a formal search of the site by American investigators ever since.
In November, a small advance team connected with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, visited the site and confirmed it was where the Hot as Hell bomber crashed.
Excavating the location for human remains — bone fragments, teeth and fingernails — was put off until a full JPAC team made its trek to the site this past weekend.
“This is the first recovery operation that JPAC has conducted in India in 30 years,” said Gary Zaetz, son of Larry Zaetz and the leader of the group of relatives of the Hot as Hell crew.
Gary Zaetz, who lives in North Carolina, credited Vermont’s congressional delegation for helping to persuade JPAC to investigate the Hot as Hell case in advance of five recently discovered World War II-era aircraft crash sites in India.
“They went above and beyond the call of duty to get the Defense Department to move on this issue,” Gary Zaetz said of Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch. No one at JPAC’s command center in Hawaii could be reached for comment Monday.
Gary Zaetz said he was first informed that the JPAC team had reached the site by Oken Tayeng, a local guide he met when he traveled to the site himself in November. Tayeng was the same guide who led Kuhles to the site in 2006.
“It didn’t look like it had been disturbed very much,” he said of the crash site. “I saw an entire wing section and a lot of aluminum debris.” He said the crash site, 9,400 feet above sea level, was just below the mountain’s tree line.
Gary Zaetz said the region’s harsh wind and weather could complicate finding human remains. He said he understood that JPAC had sent 15 or 16 people to the site and that the team is expected to stay in India for a month.
Whatever human remains are found will be transported to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii to see if the DNA contained in them matches those of any of the crew’s relatives. Larry Zaetz said he had provided a DNA sample of his saliva to JPAC.
The other Vermonter aboard the Hot as Hell flight was Capt. William A. Swanson of Proctor, who has very few surviving relatives. A grandniece of Swanson said he was promoted to captain just before the fateful flight.
Irwin Zaetz was a last-minute addition to the crew. He replaced the regular navigator, who was ill. Zaetz and Swanson did not know each other.
Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or e-mail at shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com.
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