ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 TAG: 9701150105
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MAO'ER MOUNTAIN, CHINA
SOURCE: Associated Press
A U.S. search Tuesday for the remains of servicemen missing from World War II turned into a treacherous scramble in mist across slick boulders and near-vertical cliffs.
Chinese officials guided U.S. experts and journalists for their first look at the airmen's wrecked B-24 bomber, scattered in bamboo and crags on the granite face of Mao'er - or ``Kitten'' - Mountain, the tallest in southern China.
One reporter, Stephanie Ho from the Voice of America, fell off a ledge and tumbled more than 200 feet. She was knocked unconscious and suffered a slight head injury.
``I don't think any of us was expecting it to be as difficult terrain as it was,'' said Alan Liotta, deputy director of the U.S. military's POW-MIA office who is on the six-member team.
The plane, which crashed here in foul weather on Aug. 31, 1944, was discovered by two Chinese farmers on Oct. 2. The pair had been hunting for wild herbs to make medicine.
In a gesture of friendship to the United States, the Chinese arranged for a U.S. crew to come to this region of terraced rice paddies. Xing'an County officials spent two months cutting a trail into the wilderness and mobilized 500 people to haul out remains of the 10-man crew and wreckage. George Hobart Pierpont, of Salem, Va., piloted the B-24.
On Tuesday, the U.S. team, Chinese officials and reporters hung on ropes strung from trees and grabbed wet tree roots and bamboo as they hiked toward the site, on the side of the 7,000-foot mountain.
The 2 1/2-mile trail from the nearest road dropped steeply through boulders. Wild monkeys, boars and bears roam the area. In summer, leeches and poisonous snakes keep people away.
Leading the crew was one of the farmers who found the wreckage, Pan Qiwen. When the VOA reporter fell, he climbed down the mountainside and carried her up on his back.
As darkness neared and the weather turned cold, the crew hoisted Ho with ropes up rock walls. She walked in other places and then was carried by stretcher to a road where an ambulance took her to a hospital in Guilin, 50 miles south.
Provincial officials allowed only nine reporters to make the final approach to the wreckage. The others turned back. Those who went on to the site were not expected to be heard from until today.
About 1,000 planes went down over China during World War II, and about 100 remain unaccounted for, according to the Pentagon. The only other recovery of remains from a lost World War II aircraft was from a glacier in Tibet in 1994.
On its second mission, the B-24, part of the 308th Bomber Group of the 14th Air Force, was based in south China. The United States was helping China fight the Japanese army, which had occupied much of the country.
The plane crashed, apparently because of poor visibility, on its return from bombing ships near Taiwan.
A crew member of another bomber on the same mission wrote in his diary that bad weather forced his plane to circle the mountainous area for hours until the crew could see well enough to land.
A 10-man crew was aboard the plane. After a formal military honors ceremony in Beijing on Friday, the U.S. team will take the remains to a government laboratory in Hawaii for identification.
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Map by AP.by CNB