Photo By Jefferson Wolfe | Dr. Colin Colbourn, the lead historian for the non-profit organization Project...... read more read more
By Jefferson Wolfe
Fort Gregg-Adams Public Affairs Officer
FORT GREGG-ADAMS, Va. — A historian said he is in his dream job, working for a non-profit that recovers the remains of Missing In Action service members and returns them home to their relatives.
Dr. Colin Colbourn, the lead historian for the non-profit organization Project Recover, spoke Thursday during the installation’s POW/MIA luncheon at the Gregg-Adams Club.
Project Recover’s goal is to apply 21st Century science to the recovery effort, and, to that end, includes the University of Delaware and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Project Recover also works with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, whose mission is to recover unaccounted Department of Defense personnel, listed as prisoners of war or missing in action from past conflicts.
“There is nothing better than being able to tell a family that we’ve found their loved ones,” he said. “That’s why we all do it.”
There are still about 81,500 MIAs in locations all around the world, Colbourn said. This includes more than 70,000 from World War II. There are about 6,000 from the Korean War and 1,200 from Vietnam.
The funerals are often both memorials and celebrations, he said.
"These become huge town affairs and some of the most special stuff I’ve ever experienced,” he added.
Colbourn manages historical operations to help locate and identify U.S. service members missing in action from past conflicts. His work involves extensive archival research, such as arial photos and videos, case analysis and global field investigations.
Sometimes, the old images may accidentally have captured a plane crash in which the people onboard were never found. Colbourn’s job is to take what can be learned from the archival record to tell the scientists where to go look for remains, he said.
This leads to the second part of Project Recover’s process, a terrestrial search.
Workers go to the site and talk to locals to see if they can get information about, for example, airplane crash sites. Many of Project Recover’s missions involve underwater locations, but local people may have information about a crash site even if it was in a nearby body of water.
“This is their neighborhood, they know best,” Colbourn said. “This is a diplomatic mission in many ways.”
Once they identify an aquatic area where an aircraft may have crashed, workers use autonomous underwater vehicles to conduct a search. These vehicles can stay underwater for six hours and are equipped with sonar and video cameras, he added, and can scan five square miles underwater per day.
After that, workers document what they find so that professional underwater archaeologists can examine the area to identify airplane parts and possible locations for remains.
“This is essentially a crime scene, getting as much information as you can on the site in order to sort of make an argument for what plane is this, and what someone who goes to recover the remains are going to experience,” he said. “And say, ‘OK, we are in a wing, or, yes, we are in the cockpit and now we are going to see potential human remains.”
The project has just recently started doing recovery of remains, often working with the U.S. Navy, Colbourn said.
“Now we are fully vertical from research to recovery,” he added. ‘it’s really exciting for us.”
Also, during the luncheon, Col. Vernon L. Jones Jr., Combined Arms Support Command chief of staff, welcomed the attendees, speaking briefly about a World War II MIA, Army Sergeant Mayburn L. Hudson of Lynchburg, Virginia, who was returned home in August.
The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Band’s woodwind quartet provided music, and a joint services honor guard conducted a missing man table and honors ceremony.
For more information about Project Recover: https://www.projectrecover.org/
For more information about DPAA: www.dpaa.mil
| Date Taken: | 09.19.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 09.19.2024 16:11 |
| Story ID: | 481339 |
| Location: | FORT GREGG-ADAMS, VIRGINIA, US |
| Web Views: | 75 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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