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    Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II
    Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II
    Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II
    Audiobook9 hours

    Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II

    Written by Wil S. Hylton

    Narrated by Chris Sorensen

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In the fall of 1944, a massive American bomber carrying eleven men vanished over the Pacific islands of Palau, leaving a trail of mysteries. According to mission reports from the Army Air Forces, the plane crashed in shallow water-- but when investigators went to find it, the wreckage wasn't there. Witnesses saw the crew parachute to safety, yet the airmen were never seen again. Some of their relatives whispered that they had returned to the United States in secret and lived in hiding. But they never explained why. For sixty years, the U.S. government, the children of the missing airmen, and a maverick team of scientists and scuba divers searched the islands for clues. They trolled the water with side-scan sonar, conducted grid searches on the seafloor, crawled through thickets of mangrove and poison trees, and flew over the islands in small planes to shoot infrared photography. With every clue they found, the mystery only deepened. Now, in a spellbinding narrative, Wil S. Hylton weaves together the true story of the missing men, their final mission, the families they left behind, and the real reason their disappearance remained shrouded in secrecy for so long. This is a story of love, loss, sacrifice, and faith-- of the undying hope among the families of the missing, and the relentless determination of scientists, explorers, archaeologists, and deep-sea divers to solve one of the enduring mysteries of World War II.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateNov 5, 2013
    ISBN9781470392222
    Vanished: The Sixty-Year Search for the Missing Men of World War II

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    Reviews for Vanished

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    • 5/5
      We need to be thankful, as a nation, not only for the men and women who defend our national interests (as our leaders see them) but also for the more "common" man who finds curiosity in everyday life, explores the "why" of it, grabs it like a terrier, shakes it, chews on it, and never gives up on it, at least until some small part of it is consumed. This is the case of W. S. Hylton's "Vanished", a fascinating book looking at modern forensic science and how it relates to a nation that finds enough reasons for war that it seems it is always hoping to "bring the missing home". Our current "arguments" pale in comparison to WW II, the, hopefully, last "real big one" as wars go. Mr. Hylton has done a fine job not only describing the means and methods of discovering the lost airmen about whom he writes, but more about those they had to leave behind. Please remember, reader of this review, that Mr. Hylton's book is not an anti-war tome, but like ALL books about man versus man, nation vs. nation, it may, when one considers the potential alternative possibilities, be viewed as such.
    • 4/5
      Very compelling story with nice pacing between the past and present. The characters involved are well written, and the author makes you feel the ticking of the clock of both the flyers in the war, and the searchers looking for where they went down. Of particular interest is the protocol which has to be observed after a site is discovered. The tension of wanting to notify the families but having to wait for the military protocol is very well done.
    • 5/5
      “Are their spirits waiting to be remembered, or at least not forgotten?”

      At the end of World War II, 78,750 Americans were listed as Missing In Action (MIA) with roughly half in the Pacific.

      In 1993, Dr. Pat Scannon traveled to the Pacific and the Palau Islands as part of a search team looking into the first combat kill of the young naval aviator, George H.W. Bush. Bush’s plane was on a photographic mission in the summer of the 1944 when he sank a 150-ft fishing trawler. Their search concluded when the wreck was located and weapons were found among the debris verifying the validity of the air strike and clearing controversy that innocents were killed.

      Following the completion of the trawler mission, Pat and his wife hired a guide to explore the islands and other war wrecks. As fate would have it, the guide took them to a beach to view a section of an aircraft wing. The sudden realization that it was a downed American aircraft changed Pat’s life forever. Pat’s detailed journal reports, ”I just came around that bend in the coral, and I was a different person.”

      Hylton has crafted a remarkable narrative from Scannon’s dedicated research and personal journals. As a fairly uninformed American, I was mesmerized and held captive reading about the little covered Pacific battles; shocked by what now appear primitive, WWII aircraft and equipment used by our military.

      The story flows backward and forward through the lives of the lost servicemen still haunting these Pacific islands, their families still waiting for information 60 years after last contact and with Pat Scannon’s dedication to finding answers. Scannon’s integrity, patriotism, tenacity and ingenious methods have led to the recovery of many lost war heros. We follow Pat from his initial curiosity to the founding of the Bent Prop Project dedicated to locating and assisting with identifying American prisoners of war (POW) and missing in action (MIA) from World War II and other conflicts around the world.

      This slim 272 page book will stir your emotions.

      It has deeply stirred mine. Unbeknownst to me, my family had a WWII link to this Pacific timeline. My father, a WWII veteran, was very silent about his war experiences. Reading this book has given meaning and answers to some of my own questions.

      Highly recommend reading.
    • 5/5
      This book was a fantastic read, highly recommended for anyone interested in World War 2 and the search for lost wrecks. Very interesting to learn the background on the search and wreck.
    • 4/5
      Well read, interesting story about one plane and crew of a B 24 lost in the Pacific during WW2. Lots of excellent background information about B 24s, not a pleasant plane to fly or fight, and MIA recovery. The book has two good maps and several pictures used as chapter heading that add to the historic content. The trailer from the publisher is an excellent introduction. The Liberator wing collapsing under gun fire is an apt portrayal of a serious combat deficiency of this aircraft.
    • 4/5
      On September 1, 1944, a B-24 was shot down over the island of Palau in the Pacific Ocean. 60 years later , the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command set out to recover the remains of the crew who died in the crash or in the hands of the Japanese afterwards. Hylton traces the background of the important members of the recovery team. He also does the same for the airmen and their families including mysteries that have plagued the families for years.It reads somewhat like a detective novel what with the search for the exact location of the plane, tracking down living family members, finding locals who lived on Palau who witnessed the crash and visiting archives and libraries around the country.
    • 4/5
      Excellent book. It was believed that 3 B-24 liberator aircraft were shot down over Palau during WWII. But there was scant information in records, the air force was not really part of the WWII official ledgers, and the men were still listed as MIA - is the rosters of the planes were to be believed. What really happened? It took several men with the dedication and resources to keep looking into the issue, development of a military agency that was set up to find the MIA remains from any war (it didn't exist for WWII), new technology, such as Photoshop overlays of old mission reports with current topography, and assistance from the locals, to find the three planes (and many others) and bring the remains that could be found back to American soil for burial.
    • 5/5
      Hylton weaves the story of the missing men, the story of Scannon's epiphany, search for the men and the psychological effects of the Missing in Action appellation on their families. You have history, science, psychology, and a mystery all in one book that keeps you involved as you want to find out what happened to that plane and her crew. My great-aunt at least was able to bury her husband after the Philippines had been liberated and his remains recovered. These families lived in limbo not knowing what exactly happened to their loved ones and in Tommy Doyle's case, had relatives telling him that his father had abandoned he and his mother and had started a new family. That was a question I wished the book had answered. Why tell them that? Totally enjoyed this book.
    • 5/5
      An excellent story that gives equal time to both the World War II plane crash in the Pacific as well as the team of explorers who set out to find the plane. I felt that Hylton covered both sides of the story well and I appreciated the style in alternating back and forth over storylines. I would have appreciated some more photos but definitely appreciated the maps at the front of the book and found them very helpful.
    • 4/5
      Vanished tells the story of a missing B24 bomber and its crew, shot down in the South Pacific during the Second World War. Author Wil Hylton fleshes out the story of the aircrew, their families and the searchers who, decades after the last shot of the war was fired, continue to scour even the most remote battlefields, seeking to find the missing and return them home. The balance between technical and personal is maintained throughout the book, and the story arc has a very nice pace to it. My one wish would be for the ultimate discovery to have been a bit more dramatic. All in all, Vanished is a good read that should hold the attention of a wide range of readers.
    • 4/5
      While it can be a little scatter-shot in style, "Vanished" does an excellent job in showing the respect, passion and hard work involved in an almost impossible mission. A must for any WWII Pacific buff.
    • 3/5
      I received Vanished as part of a Goodreads giveaway.

      Vanished tells the story of an air crew that disappeared on or around the island nation of Palau, alternating modern day chapters of the excavation with reconstructed events around the final mission, as well as the personal lives of the men lost.

      It was a very well-told story, and the back-and-forth structure was very effective. Most interesting was the insight on so-called "MIA families" who suffer a unique sort of grief, that of not knowing. I enjoyed getting to know all the characters, both the scientists, researchers, and descendants of the crew in the 1990s-2000s and the soldiers themselves. As someone who isn't a big WWII history buff, it was an interesting read; however, I feel like I would have gotten more out of it had I a real interest in the period.

      Definitely recommended, especially for fans of WWII and military history.
    • 4/5
      This book was not quite what I was hoping it would be. I was very intrigued by the idea of reading about a search for the missing men from World War II. But the book never quite delivered the story. The book seemed to go in too many different directions. We are given the story of the son of one of the missing fliers, the story of a medical researcher who invests himself in the search, the story of a few of the lost pilots, the story of the personal lives of a few of the Japanese officers and I lost track of other numerous stories. These stories never quite fit together into one narrative. I wonder if they were added to make a book out of limited material that could have been covered in a comprehensive magazine article.There are pictures at the beginning of each chapter, but no information is given about them. A caption for each of them could have added to the book. I also would have liked to see more maps. There are a couple of maps right after the table of contents, but I think more maps that focused on certain areas throughout the book would have been quite helpful in understanding the search.
    • 5/5
      This is one of those non-fiction books that gets started as a personality piece in a popular magazine, and, due to questions from readers, is expanded to include more than the personality. A man takes a vacation and sees parts of WWII planes in the reef. He becomes obsessed with the planes and their crews, and then with their stories, and finally with their families.World War II, especially the Pacific theater, has been getting a lot of attention lately. Most of the fighting was over the ocean, making finding the bodies of the dead difficult. Too many of them were just listed as missing in action, leaving families without closure, without really knowing what happened to their loved ones. This book examines that issue.
    • 5/5
      In this book, Wil Hylton takes us on adventure that beings with a scrap of airplane wing and ends at Arlington National Cemetary. You will generally follow the tracks of a medical researcher named Pat Scannon, who accepted an invitation to go scuba diving in the Palaus and came upon an airplane wing from a wreck. Then the ride begins. He becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to the crew of the aircraft - and begins a period of research that results in him becoming an expert in the field - gaining the respect of the US Military's Central Identification Laboratory and forming The Bentprop Project dedicated to fallen servicemen in the Pacific.The book is a winding adventure to track down the fate of the crew of the bomber that went down in 1944. The author handles this with numerous transitions and moving back and forth been the war and the more recent history of the project. This is done smoothly and the read is fulfilling, fast and educational. There is so much we learn along the way; about the 307th Bombardment Group in the Pacific in WW2, the Palau Islands, the B24 Bomber, the crew of the bomber found and their families, the fate of others lost and some found, the courage Navy divers, the crushing emptiness felt by MIA families, the vast archives to be searched and relentless focus on a goal. A worthwhile ride of several hours' time. Take it.
    • 4/5
      An excellent book. Hylton combines a historical look at one of the war's minor but intense operations on the path to victory in the Pacific with a very detailed and personal look at the efforts to discover and recover so many men still missing for over 60 years. The author lets us inside the grief and turmoil still felt every day by families of those lost but never returned.All-in-all this was a very intimate and moving look at a subject all too often left behind as time separates us from events.
    • 4/5
      Wil Hylton has written a very detailed book about a bomber lost during WWII, its crew, their families, and a "forgotten" battle on the Pacific. If you want political, technical, and personal details of the battle of Palau, this is the book for you.
    • 5/5
      I received Wil S. Hylton’s new book, Vanished: the sixty-year search for the missing men of World War II, from LibraryThing.com’s Early Reviewer program. I was a little apprehensive about requesting it, I spent most of the 1980s reading World War II history, and I was a little worried about falling back into that obsession. But this is not your everyday book of war history. I don’t believe this book could have been written thirty years ago, maybe not even ten years ago. Hylton writes about the true face of war, not Hollywood glory but death and suffering and loss. Loss that can carry forward over generations. I need to say that the title is a little misleading. The book’s focus is on the efforts to find the crew of B-24 #453. That crew, and more importantly the families that survived them, are proxies for every MIA, and MIA’s family, in every war. Perhaps the book should be called Vanished: the search for war’s missing.Hylton is obviously a first-rate writer and researcher. His book is laid out like a well plotted mystery, which it is, and is documented like a scholarly work of history, which it could have been if Hylton were not such a good writer. This book pulled me in and was difficult to put down, except for when my eyes filled with tears as Hylton exposes the heart wrenching loss that MIA families endure even decades later. The dead sometimes appear in wars history, the missing are noted, but their families are never mentioned. This book reveals that they are also casualties of war, as deeply scarred as any battlefield casualty. Hylton’s first book is as good as any first non-fiction I have read since David McCullough's “The Johnstown Flood”. His style is somewhere between McCullough and Cornelius Ryan, an admirable mix of intimate first person interviews and an ability to bring archival documents to life. I think that you will like this book.
    • 4/5
      This was a suspenseful read that records one man's desire to discover what happened to three B-24 Liberators shot down near Palau in the Pacific theater of World War II. Pat Scannon's current-day journey of research in discovering the mystery of those lost B-24's, gave me goose bumps.. I recommend this book for anyone interested in WWII history.
    • 5/5
      Astonishingly, more than 56,000 World War II American troops are still missing. Even more astonishing (at least to me) is that two-thirds of all missing soldiers from the entire last century were lost in World War II’s Pacific theater. Now, Wil S. Hylton’s Vanished offers new insight into the sixty-year search that has still turned up such a small percentage of the missing men. Vanished, at times, reads more like a novel than a nonfiction account of the combination of tenacity and luck that sometimes results in remains being found and identified. Hylton makes this happen by focusing on one specific B-24 crew that was shot down somewhere in the vicinity of Palau, a remote South Pacific island that was for a brief time one of the war’s hotspots because of its relative nearness to Japan. The author, via journals, old letters, eyewitness interviews, and family interviews, follows the crewmembers from the beginning of their military service, through their preparation to fly on the B-24, right up to the moment of their disappearance. In the process, Hylton individualizes several of the men, reminding the reader that they, and those they left behind, were not so very different from any of us. They had hopes and dreams and big plans for the futures that would so suddenly end. And, sadly, those they left behind most often are still wondering what their loved one’s final moments were like and where they are. The lucky survivors will someday get that kind of closure; the unlucky ones will die before their lost men are recovered.Vanished is a reminder that not everyone has given up on finding these men before their immediate families are all gone. There are some good, dedicated men and women out there who devote a good bit of their spare time (and sometimes their own money) to continue the search. Be they archaeologists, scientists, ex-military personnel, deep-sea divers, or simply modern day explorers, these men deserve our thanks.
    • 5/5
      Well-written dramatic story about the fate of the crew of a downed US plane during WWII. Hyland's tale goes back and forth between the passionate man trying to locate the remains of the crew 60 years later and the lives of the crew members and their families up to current times. Excellent research and fine writing.
    • 4/5
      Author Wil Hylton does a good job pacing this story of a search for a missing WWII B-24 in the Pacific. On one hand it's the story of a man who's life becomes encompassed (maybe even obsessed) with finding the wreckage of this missing bomber.Pat Scannon spends years of his own time and money searching Palau and the surrounding area for these missing soldiers. Along the way he makes many other discoveries of different WWII crash sites but 453 alludes him. It's a real testament to human passion and want the way all involved with Scannon went about this mission. The other part of the story is the lives of these missing men but more strikingly how the lack of closure affects MIA families for generations. One might think that nearly 70 years after WWII ended, the families and new generations may no longer think of these missing men. Hylton expertly shows how lack of information for families of MIA's from all wars haunt people for years. Very insightful with many letters from these soldiers to go along with the stories of the men and women who search for and identify the missing.
    • 4/5
      There are two stories woven throughout "Vanished." One is that of the soldiers who go missing in World War II, and it is compelling, moving and painful. The second story is that of the a man who, by chance, learns of the missing soldiers and becomes determined to discover their fate.Everything here is ripe for a truly spectacular book, but "Vanished" is not it.The problem begins with the focus of the book, which is Pat Scannon. After seeing parts of downed American planes from WWII, Scannon goes in search of their story.I quickly found myself in Scannon's shoes - desperate to know the identities of the soldiers, their fates, the stories of their families. I was not interested in Scannon himself. Yet there was an incredible amount of detail about his life and interests and pursuits (when I came across a line about his wife's hobbies, I could barely restrain myself). There were also frequent bits - which were interesting enough but almost seemed to be thrown in as filler - about figures whose names were only mentioned in passing. And in the end - wrapped up tidily and quickly - I didn't feel satisfied. I felt the soldiers had been shortchanged.I wish "Vanished" had had a different order. I wish readers had the opportunity to really come to know the airmen, because this should have been their story. Then a few chapters at the end about Scannon and how he uncovered their fate (which is moderately interesting - not really remarkable).I read a great deal about war and its aftermath, and I really wanted to love this book. Unfortunately, it left me quite empty.
    • 5/5
      This was an amazing, gripping, and at times suspenseful read that documents one man's sudden overwhelming desire to find out what happened to three B-24 Liberators shot down near Palau in the Pacific theater of World War II. Hylton does a great job of describing Pat Scannon's current-day journey of research, travel, interviews, heartaches, and elation in discovering the mystery of what happened to those lost B-24's, and shows a masterful job of interweaving that with the very personal back story of the men on those ill-fated flights. I literally had goosebumps at times while reading this. The book also does a good job at conveying just how many of our servicemen are unaccounted for in the Pacific theater, and the incredibly long odds people like Scannon and his Bent-Prop Project face in shedding light on the mysteries surrounding them. I recommend this book for anyone, especially the patriotic and those with interests in aviation and World War II.
    • 5/5
      This book is an excellent addtion to any WWII collection filling a niche that is ofter overlooked. Hylton's journalistic style is easy to read and quite engaging. He succesfully portrays the personalities of the missing men, the anguish of the families and the challenges encountered by the research team. This would also be a great book to help introduce WWII to a new generation.
    • 5/5
      I think this is a wonderful book. In a departure from many military history books, it weaves together the story of a WWII plane crash with the story of the present-day search for the crash site.The scope of the WWII story is fairly small: one aircrew, with a few family members and other flyers mentioned less often. Letters written by the fliers are used, as well as interviews with their families. The "big men of history" -- FDR, Nimitz, and MacArthur -- show up, but only as their actions affect the aircrew at a significant moment. The present-day story also focuses on just a handful of people, so it's easy not not get lost in a maze of names. The author thoughtfully included a few suggestions on how to pronounce new names when they are introduced, which I appreciated. He also doesn't bury the reader in acronyms, part numbers, and strings of capital letters, so the book reads less like military history and more like a story being told.I would have liked two things: a few more pictures, and a little more time spent on the last chapter of the book. The stories stretch across almost seventy years, but they wrap up the last half-dozen in just a few pages -- and I wanted some more time to get closure.I will recommend this book to readers of history and military history, as well as casual readers who are looking for a change.
    • 5/5
      Pure military history has never appealed to me. Although I enjoy history, I have no military background and war stories and battles have never particularly interested me."Vanished" is different. I found it to be a real page-turner. Reading during lunch turned into reading at the kitchen table after lunch to find out what happened next. That's because "Vanished" isn't pure military history, but the story of the personal quest of Pat Scannon to unravel the mystery of a B-24 bomber that disappeared with its crew on September 1, 1944 in the Pacific near Palau, colored by the personalities and circumstances of the crew and their families and put into context by the strategy and actions of the Japanese and U.S. military forces.Hylton's saga resonated for me having visited Papua New Guinea and Midway Island and toured the remnants of the Japanese and U.S. World War II tunnels, bunkers, tanks, gun batteries, pillboxes, ammunition storage huts and memorials. My Pacific travel included diving in Fiji, Tahiti, and Papua New Guinea, so I could also identify with the location and recovery process of the wrecks and artifacts Scannon discovered, explored and recovered.Scannon's motivation to uncover the details of the vanished bomber and crew was driven by the need of the families of the airmen to know what happened to the men and, hopefully, recover remains to officially put to rest. This process took ten years, thousands of dollars, and liaisons with government organizations and veterans. Scannon went from an interested observer with a 1993 expedition to find a Japanese trawler sunk by George H. W. Bush in July 1944 to a man driven by the need to identify and explore military planes sunk in the Pacific to find soldiers missing or killed in action."Vanished" is well written and replete with notes and supported by an extensive bibliography. The only improvements that could be made to "Vanished" are improving the clarity and the details of the maps included in the book, and adding more photographs.Note: I appreciate the quality of the paper used to print "Vanished." Frequently, I am disappointed to find quality books printed on thin, cheap paper. Personally, I would prefer to pay a bit more for a more enjoyable reading experience and a more permanent book.