Agartala, Sep 7 (TIWN) An international organisation to be engaged by the Joint Prisoners of War and Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) will excavate in northern Tripura to collect remains of soldiers and US military aircraft that crashed during World War II (1939-45). An official of Tripura’s home department said : “Six officials of the American government and JPAC have done an initial survey for two days (Thursday and Friday) at Dhumachara tribal village in hilly Longtharai Valley under Dhalai district in northern Tripura.”

“The visiting team has found two propellers of the crashed US military aircraft in the Kalapahar hill ranges in remote village (Dhumachara). Both the propellers half concealed in the hilly stones and soils in the mountainous areas overflowing by a hilly ‘chara’ (rivulet),” the official said.

The official, who accompanied the visiting team, said that the local tribal villagers told the US team that some remains of the soldiers of allied forces had protected until few years back, but these had washed away by the rain and rivulets’ water besides other reasons.      

The visiting officials before leaving Agartala Saturday told the Tripura Chief Secretary Dr Sanjay Kumar Panda and other officials that they through an international agency would start excavation next month (November) to collect the propellers of the crashed US military aircraft, fragments of the aircrafts and remains of the soldiers’ bodies, if any.        

Accompanied by external affairs ministry’s Under Secretary Amit Kumar Mishra and Sector Officer P.K. Rout of the union home ministry the US team arrived here Wednesday as an advance party of the JPAC and the US officials to locate the remains of soldiers and US military aircraft at Dhumachara tribal village and adjoining areas.

The JPAC and the US officials include, Jennifer Nasarenko (JPAC plans director), Timothy Duffy (JPAC operations director), Owen O’ Leary (JPAC official), Captain Timothy J. Maricle (US defense attaché), Gregory G. Mitchell (regional security officer, US Consulate in Kolkata) and Soumen Basu (official of US Consulate in Kolkata).

Before moving to the remote village (Dhumachara), the US and Indian officials held meetings at Agartala and Ambassa with the Tripura government and the district administration officials. Dhalai District magistrate Abhishek Singh, Deputy Inspector General of Police Sourav Tripathi, state home department’s deputy secretary Moslem Uddin Ahmed have also accompanied the visiting team in the trip.

A senior Tripura police official said that an American citizen, David Campbell, had survived the crash, but died subsequently. Campbell’s younger brother Tony Campbell, who later learnt about the crash and his brother’s death from American army records and other sources. He had visited Tripura in the mid-nineties when insurgency was at its height in the northeastern state. Campbell could not visit the villages in north Tripura due to security reasons. 

“Campbell after returning to America took up the issue with the US government, which subsequently informed the matter to the Indian government,” the police official said.

He said that the Campbell family have been, for the past many years, persuading both the US and Indian governments to look into the matter and lastly, the US has sent their official team to study the matter on the spot before taking appropriate steps.

Some fragments of a US military aircraft used during World War II had been recovered in northern Tripura’s Longtharai Valley last January, 66 years after it crashed.

An officer of the paramilitary Assam Rifles had told reporters earlier that some remnants of an American C-47B aircraft that crashed during World War II were recovered by troopers of the 34th Battalion.

“A series of search operations had been launched since September last year to find out the crash site in the thick and dense forests of all three hill ridges of northern Tripura - Baramura, Atharamura and Longtharai. Finally, our troopers achieved success in the first week of January,” the officer said.

He said that during World War II, the Allied forces lost hundreds of aircraft and a large number of soldiers in the China-Burma-India (CBI) theatre of operations.

“The majority of allied crashes were caused by inhospitable weather, mechanical failure or navigational errors. The American Joint Prisoners of War and Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) had identified 16 known crash sites in northeast India where allied forces aircraft crashed during World War II,” the officer said.

“On May 17, 1946, the ill-fated C-47B aircraft crashed in Tripura along with 11 crew members due to stormy conditions while transporting the remains of Allied POWs (prisoners of war) from Yangon (erstwhile capital of Burma, now Myanmar) to Calcutta,” the officer had said.

According to the officer, the 34th Battalion of Assam Rifles was tasked to find out the details of the aircraft and accordingly launched a hunt.

He said that the mission was very difficult due to the inconvenient terrain of the area and since the aircraft had crashed 66 years ago. Besides, the ecology had changed over time.

“Dense forests and inhospitable topography made search operations even more cumbersome. The propellers of the aircraft were recovered,” the official said, adding that elderly locals faintly remember the crash and aided Assam Rifles troopers to find out the crash site as also the graves where the crew and soldiers had been laid to rest.

According to elderly citizens of Tripura, two more aircrafts of the allied forces during World War II had crashed at Jampui areas in northern Tripura adjoining Mizoram and Agartala’s College Tilla areas but their fragments after many years had taken away by the local people.

Meanwhile, several myths about the crash of the aircraft are still popular among local tribesmen in the mountainous northern Tripura.

“Late novelist Bimal Sinha, also the former Tripura health minister, in his novel ‘Karachi theke Longtharai’ (Karachi to Longtharai) had recalled tales of the crash of allied forces' aircraft in Tripura,” writer Tapas Debnath told IANS.

“During World War II, the Agartala airport was used by the United States Air Force. In 1942-43, the 10th Air Force and the 4th Combat Cargo Group (CCG) flew C-46 Commando transport aircraft over Burma, now Myanmar,” an official document of the Tripura government says.

It added: “The Agartala airport was also used as a supply point from which the US Air Force units air-dropped packets of supplies and ammunition to the advancing Allied forces on the ground.”

“The 4th CCG operated from the airport during December 1944 and January 1945 when the unit moved to Chittagong, now in southeast Bangladesh.”