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Termite Chaser
722nd Squadron
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Photograph courtesy of John J. Stranahan, 720th Squadron
Link To Crew Information
Link To MACR 3886
The wreckage of Termite Chaser has been discovered by a Croation Dive Team
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Our latest discovery is related to the story of a sunken U.S. Air Force aircraft discovered by our friend Davor Bursic from the shark diving partner center. In order to identify the aircraft, two very demanding dives were made in conditions of poor visibility, with specially made gas mixtures for this occasion. Arriving at the site, we determined that the wreckage of the aircraft was devastated by trawling nets beyond recognition and represented a field of scattered and bent sheet. In a pile of metal, we were able to identify some of the parts characteristic of aircraft B 24 and we were lucky to find a complete Browning machine guns lying on the sand not far from the wreckage. During these two dives we were able to clear under the sea the serial number of the machine guns and thus opened the possibility of identifying the aircraft. This is a more precise way, because because of the severe damage in the war that has strained the military industry to the end, it was no longer possible to monitor the pace of losses, so the aircraft were often assembled by several similar ones, so the serial number on the tail of the plane would not actually have to match the records in military archives. The weapons, however, the U.S. Air Force recorded each piece with great precision, so with their so-called "war on drugs," the U.S. Air Force recorded it with great precision. The Macr (Missing Air Crew Report), a database containing the fates of U.S. air men. And we found that it was one B 24 that, interestingly, the Americans believed to have fallen at Portoroža in then-Italy, but the serial number of the Browning that we were able to clear indicates that the Union was still the place where B 24 was brought down to sea due to a fault in the engine, as evidenced by reports from other aircraft in the formation, not the very reports of the surviving crew members of that lost B 24H that bore the nickname Termite Chaser. Following the events, we informed the Office of the Military Attaché of the American Embassy in Zagreb of our finding of the fate of the sunken aircraft. Following our application, they have initiated a further vetting mechanism and confirmed our allegations. They praised our work and initiative and argued, as we do, that there were no remains of crew members among the remains of the aircraft.
Link To Actual Newspaper Article
Information provided by Sime Lisica
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