Bones Recovered From WWII Bomber Wreck

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Human remains have been recovered from the wreck of a Halifax bomber that was shot down in Poland in 1944. Ground penetrating radar was used to pinpoint the hulk of the four-engine bomber that was on a secret mission to supply Polish resistance forces. It was brought down by anti-aircraft fire, killing five Canadian and two British crewmembers. “It turned out that there is only a few tons of scrap, but we also found personal belongings, badges, maps, containers with ammo and cardigan pullovers,” Piotr Sliwowski, chief historian of the Warsaw Rising Museum told CanWest News. “The most important were, of course, human remnants which gave it another, deeper dimension.” The discovery was especially poignant for surviving relatives of the crewmen, some of whom attended a ceremony in 2002 honoring the young men in the plane. After 62 years, the pain of loss is still felt, said Catherine Jolly, of St. Catharines, Ontario, whose brother George Chapman was among those killed. “We knew so very little about what happened to my brother, and my parents were so badly hurt when nothing could be told, that we never spoke of him,” she said. It was originally believed that the bodies of all on board had been buried in a war cemetery in Krakow. The bones found with the wreck will likely be interred there.

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