Lost Bomber of World War II Rediscovered

The underwater wreckage of a B-25 Mitchell bomber from World War II near Papua New Guinea. Credit: Project Recover About 75 years ago, the North American B-25 Mitchell bomber became famous as the twin-engined plane that helped the United States launch the first retaliatory attack on the Imperial Japanese homeland during World War II. The medium bombers mainly deployed in the Pacific theater of war, where they often served as low-flying gunships that attacked both land and sea targets with bombs and machine gun strafing. But not all of the bombers and their six-man crews returned home from those missions, as evidenced by the recently announced discovery of a lost bomber after it had gone missing for the better part of a century. In February, a team of marine scientists and archaeologists searched nearly 10 square kilometers of ocean floor near Papua New Guinea before finding the debris field from ...