Navy won't launch recovery mission
Citing safety concerns, the U.S. Navy has rejected the latest request to recover the bodies of three airmen -- including one with Lake County ties -- who died in Antarctica in 1946.
In a letter sent Thursday to a relative of one of the dead flyers, Navy Secretary Donald C. Winter said the Navy considers the polar site to be the final resting place of the airmen and their doomed seaplane, the George One.
Winter cited the USS Arizona, which contains the remains of sailors aboard when it sank during the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, as a famous example.
The decision disappointed a Mundelein woman whose brother is among the dead entombed on Antarctica.
"I really thought we were going to get there," said Betty Spencer, 81. Her brother, Wendell K. Hendersin, was a radioman on the ill-fated flight.
Despite, Winter's decision, a civilian recovery mission is in the works.
Lou Sapienza, a Seattle photographer who served with an expedition that salvaged a World War II-era plane in Greenland in the 1990s, is moving forward with his own plan to recover the bodies.
"As long as the families' desire is to bring these men home, I will bring them home -- to the country and soil they loved, served and died for," Sapienza said in a news release.
The Navy is opposed to such an operation, however. And because all Navy ship or airplane wrecks remain government property, any private mission would require Navy consent, Navy spokeswoman Capt. Beci Brenton said Friday.
"We don't support the possible disruption or potential desecration of the site," Brenton said.
Sapienza remains undaunted and said he'll seek a congressional override and federal funding for the proposed mission.
The George One crashed during Operation Highjump, the largest Antarctic expedition ever undertaken.
Six men survived. Before being rescued, they buried the dead near the wreckage. Today, the graves could be under more than 100 feet of ice, experts have said.
Spencer's family and other relatives of the dead airmen have campaigned for the bodies to be returned to the United States. The push for a recovery gained momentum in 2003, after a Daily Herald story about the crash prompted assistance from U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk of Highland Park.
Other newspaper, magazine and television reports followed, as did a book penned by the son of a George One survivor.
In 2004, the U.S. Geological Survey, a scientific agency that studies the world's natural resources, announced a crew may have located the wreckage using ice-penetrating radar and other technology.
Sapienza wants to have a radar team on the Antarctic surface in November 2008 and hopes to return in 2009 to recover the bodies.