Volunteers forced to launch private mission to recover RAF crew's bodies
Sunday is the 64th anniversary of the crash that killed the crew of the 356 Squadron Liberator KL654 while on a resupply sortie over Negeri Sembilan in central Malaya.
Japan had announced its surrender only eight days earlier and part of the crew’s mission was to search for prisoners of war still held in camps in the jungle.
The site of the crash was first discovered in the 1950s and reported to the authorities, but no action was taken. Another appeal was made in 1970, but there was again indifference among British authorities. In 2006, a team of Malaysian aviation archaeologists found the plane and a preliminary excavation the following year recovered two rings, a pocket knife, belt buckles, watch straps and bone fragments.
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Japan had announced its surrender only eight days earlier and part of the crew’s mission was to search for prisoners of war still held in camps in the jungle.
The site of the crash was first discovered in the 1950s and reported to the authorities, but no action was taken. Another appeal was made in 1970, but there was again indifference among British authorities. In 2006, a team of Malaysian aviation archaeologists found the plane and a preliminary excavation the following year recovered two rings, a pocket knife, belt buckles, watch straps and bone fragments.