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Thursday,
September 02, 2010
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| | Email this article • Print this article | WWII airman finally
laid to rest; family goes
to Arlington cemetery
By Ashley Smith
Staff Writer
More than half a century ago, a young Army airman left his family in Lawrence County to serve his country in the second world war. They will finally be reunited Tuesday when his remains are laid to rest in Arlingtion National Cemetery, 67 years after his death.
First Lt. Wilson L. Pinkstaff, a Lawrenceville Township High School graduate, was a very young man when he enlisted in the Army in December 1940. Recently graduated from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, his parents, Elmer and Amanda (Griffin) Pinkstaff were required to sign a permission slip for their son to enlist.
The young airman died Dec. 5, 1942. It was supposed to be a routine attack on a Japanese command center, but Pinkstaff nor his seven-man crew would ever return from the ill-fated flight over New Guinea.
According to Pinkstaff's sister, Zetta Sellers, family members first learned what happened to her brother in 2004. Since then, additional details have been discovered and released.
Pinkstaff, who was stationed at Laloki Airdrome, Port Moresby, New Guinea, wasn't scheduled to fly Dec. 5, 1942. A group of B-24 Bombers from 5th Air Force, 38th Bomber Group, 405th Bomber Squadron, were called upon to conduct a routine attack on a Japanese command center located in Buna, New Guinea. A total of 10 aircraft were formed with a standby, The Happy Legend, on standby.
The 10 aircraft took off from the airstrip in Port Moresby, and the plane in the fourth position immediately tailed a thick stream of smoke. Its engines functioned poorly, so while that crew circled the runway to land, The Happy Legend - Pinkstaff and his seven-man crew - took off to complete the gap in the formation.
Once the eight young men climbed into the skies above New Guinea, no one is completely sure what happened. Some witnesses reported that the plane did not make formation, while others reported they saw Pinkstaff flying alongside them. When the formation emerged from a cloud bank over the Owen Stanley Mountain Range, The Happy Legend was not visible.
Sellers said it is known, however, that the airplane and its crew did not join the formation in bombing the target in Buna and was not seen in the air by allied forces after passing through the cloud cover. At the time of the incident, no sightings were reported, nor any information obtained to enable the U.S. forces to locate the missing aircraft or its crew.
Two members of the 1st Australian Salvage Corp originally identified the crash site in February 1943. They described the site as being surrounded in a "dense, high-elevation rainforest, adjacent to two 'dry' lake beds, the closest one being Little Myola."
The crash site is situated about one kilometer from Little Myola, near a stream which carries water from the "dry" lake bed and adjacent slopes to the Efogi River. The Australian team found the aircraft wreckage, with an unexploded ordinance still attached to the airplane, a portion of the fuselage bearing the numbers "907" in yellow paint, human remains, and an identification tag belonging to one of the crew members.
Pinkstaff was flying a B-25 carrying five or six 500-pound bombs. All but one of the bombs is believed to have exploded on impact.
In 1961, a group of local villagers helped a joint American and Royal Australian Force team locate the crash crater, which measured approximately 18 meters in length. They located a piece of wreckage with numbers associated with the manufacturer's number. Also discovered was a piece of metal with the letters "Happ." During this period, the teams were forced to leave the site because of their inability to drain the water-filled crash crater.
Sellers said it is unknown why American recovery teams did not visit the site again for another 23 years. However, the 1986 mission was the first attempt by an American team to drain the crater, but it did not meet with success.
The next recovery effort was in 1995. At this time, the team uncovered an unexploded 500-pound bomb. In March 2004, the recovery team set-up a base camp, cleaned the area of debris and moved the bomb to a safe area. It also discovered relevant material evidence, but was unable to complete the mission because of time constraints.
The final mission took place in January 2005. During the excavation, water re-filled the crater so fast that one person was assigned to monitor the pumps 24 hours per day. The aircraft engine and landing gear were removed, and all accessed personal effects, material evidence and possible human remains were recovered.
Sellers was able to learn the military recovered an identification tag, a Bowie knife, semi-automatic pistol, driver's license, hair, soft tissue, 104 bone fragments and three possible finger and toe pads. Coins found in the crash crater date the incident to 1942.
Sellers said DNA samples were taken from one of Pinkstaff's surviving sisters, Maxine Crawford, and her daughter, Jan Crawford, in November 2003. Now six years later, Pinkstaff will finally be laid to rest Tuesday at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sellers, who resides in rural Lawrence County, said an Army officer has continued to stay in touch with Pinkstaff's family . Crawford currently lives in a nursing facility in South Bend, Ind. Four members of Pinkstaff's immediate family plan to attend the Tuesday burial.
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