Aircraft Crash Site Research Articles

Geophysical Methods Reveal Aviation Impacturbation and Inform Forensic Archaeological Recovery of Historic Aircraft Crash Sites

ABSTRACTThis paper demonstrates the utility of ground‐penetrating radar (GPR) to inform forensic archaeology recovery efforts of missing service members from historic conflict‐related aircraft crash sites. This approach is becoming more common and improving recovery strategies by pinpointing potential subsurface anomalies prior to excavation. Two examples of recovery efforts at WWII aircraft crash sites are presented, revealing the diversity of landscape upheaval signatures that result from aircraft impacts. In both situations, the GPR successfully located feature boundaries and identified aviation impacturbation. The landscape signature varied in both cases due to factors including the trajectory and velocity of the aircraft crash and the topography of the impacted landscape. Notably, a ‘halo’ effect was identified in association with one crash site, revealing the force of the impact on sandy soils. Recognition of these anthropogenic signals is important to promote effective recovery strategies, thus saving time, labour and funds, particularly in historic sites where postincident taphonomic conditions have severely altered the morphology of the landscape.

Wounded Veterans in Parks and the Joint Recovery Team: American Veterans in Underwater Archaeology

Recent underwater archaeology projects undertaken by the National Park Service (NPS) and East Carolina University (ECU) involving American military veterans offer a mutually beneficial opportunity for archaeologists and veteran participants to conduct meaningful archaeological work. Research has shown the psychological and physiological benefits of participation in outdoor activities, scuba diving, and connection with peer support groups for veterans with service-related injuries. Participation in underwater archaeology projects allows veterans to use many of their professional abilities and experiences, which in turn advances the overall goals of the projects organized by the NPS and ECU. Ongoing work in National Parks and in the Pacific with ECU allows veterans to use military skills and training to work towards a common goal with peers in a rehabilitative environment. These projects have also allowed veteran participants to form a significant connection to the past, often engaging with their own heritage on submerged military sites, such as the USS Arizona or World War II aircraft crash sites.

Towards an Integrated Approach to Recording Military Aircraft Crash Sites

The forensic investigation of military aircraft crash sites has become in recent times part of mainstream traditional archaeology. Mostly amateur aircraft enthusiasts have undertaken the recovery of military aircraft crash sites without methodically recording the remains. The sites covered in this paper have been approached based on recording the in-situ remains methodically using traditional and scientific methods used in the field of archaeology from fieldwalking, metal detecting and geophysics. The strategy and methodology used in this investigation showed how effective and important it is to recover as much of the remains as possible to place it into a meaningful context in order to understand the reasoning for why these aircraft came to a devasting end by crashing into the ground at great speed. The excavations have involved Operation Nightingale—an MOD based recovery programme that specializes in archaeology. This paper will demonstrate the importance of using such an integrated approach to the recovery of military aircraft crash sites from the Second World War by referring to specific case studies.

Viability and Application of Mounting Personal PID VOC Sensors to Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems

Using a UAS-mounted sensor to allow for a rapid response to areas in which it may be difficult to reach or may not be safe for humans to encounter can increase the situational awareness of first responders of an aircraft crash site through the remote detection, identification, and quantification of airborne hazardous materials. The primary purpose of this research is to evaluate the innovative remote sensing viability and application of integrating existing commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) sensors with small unmanned aircraft system (UAS) technology to detect potentially hazardous airborne contaminants at optimum range resolutions using UAS platforms.

Missing Aircraft Crash Sites and Spatial Relationships to the Last Radar Fix.

Few studies have examined the spatial characteristics of missing aircraft in actual distress. No previous studies have looked at the distance from the last radar plot to the crash site. The purpose of this study was to characterize this distance and then identify environmental and flight characteristics that might be used to predict the spatial relationship and, therefore, aid search and rescue planners. Detailed records were obtained from the U.S. Air Force Rescue Coordination Center for missing aircraft in distress from 2002 to 2008. The data was combined with information from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Accident Database. The spatial relationship between the last radar plot and crash site was then determined using GIS analysis. A total of 260 missing aircraft incidents involving 509 people were examined, of which 216 (83%) contained radar information. Among the missing aircraft the mortality rate was 89%; most occurred in mountainous terrain (57%); Part 91 flight accounted for 95% of the incidents; and 50% of the aircraft were found within 0.8 nmi from the last radar plot. Flight characteristics, descent rate, icing conditions, and instrument flight rule vs. visual flight rule flight could be used to predict spatial characteristics. In most circumstances, the last radar position is an excellent predictor of the crash site. However, 5% of aircraft are found further than 45.4 nmi. The flight and environmental conditions were identified and placed into an algorithm to aid search planners in determining how factors should be prioritized.

Non-invasive examination of a skull fragment recovered from a World War Two aircraft crash site

The discovery of human remains dating to the time of the Second World War is a common occurrence in Europe and the Pacific regions. This case report demonstrates the analysis of a bone fragment recovered from a Luftwaffe crash site in Austria during the summer of 2007. Eye-witness statements and official reports were used to reconstruct the historical background of the case. A recovered German military identity tag helped to identify the pilot. Aircraft parts, also discovered at the crash site in 2007, aided the identification of the aircraft type and corroborated the eye-witness reports of the final moments before and during the crash. The bone was analyzed chiefly to establish its human or non-human origin and to identify from which anatomic region the fragment could have arisen. It was identified as part of a human adult skull which exhibited peri-mortem fractures and heat damage as well as post-mortem vegetation staining. The historical background information in connection with the morphological analysis led to the presumptive identification of the cranial fragment as belonging to a downed German pilot.

MEMS 가속도계를 적용한 ELT 시스템 개발과 검증

ELT(Emergency Locator Transmitter) is used to send distress signal in the event of an aircraft crash. It is very useful but the ELT may transmit wrong signal caused by misjudging between crash and hard-landing. The reason of this problem is the low accuracy of the mechanical G-switch currently in use. To improve the ELT, we developed an ELT system using the MEMS(Micro Electro-Mechanical Sensor) accelerometer. The ELT system consists of acceleration data acquisition/analysis system, program of crash recognition, and GPS receiving system for the position information of an aircraft crash site. A free-drop table was developed for verification of the ELT system. The free-drop table was designed to replicate the acceleration and the pulse duration of the hard landing and the crash. By using the free-drop table, we showed that the ELT system performed well.

Estimation of Living Stature from Selected Anthropometric (Soft Tissue) Measurements: Applications for Forensic Anthropology

Estimation of living stature has obvious utility in the identification process. Typically, anthropologists estimate stature from the measurement of long bone length. This type of analysis is traditionally conducted on skeletonized or badly decomposed remains, so collection of the necessary bone measurements is relatively simple. As the role of anthropologists expands into medical examiner offices and mass fatality incidents, the analysis of fleshed bodies and body parts is a more common scenario. For stature estimation in these types of cases (e.g., analysis of body portions recovered from an aircraft crash site or from intentional dismemberment), the presence of soft tissue on the human remains would usually necessitate dissection to expose skeletal elements to derive metric data for stature estimation. In order to circumvent this step, this paper provides various formulae that allow for standard anthropometric (i.e., soft tissue) measurements to be used in place of skeletal measurements. Data were compiled from several anthropometric studies (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey [NHANES] and U.S. Army Anthropometric Survey [ANSUR]) and numerous regression models are presented. Results are compared between skeletal measurements and the anthropometric measurements from each study. It was found that the ANSUR models are similar to the skeletal models, while the NHANES models exhibit weaker correlation coefficients and higher standard errors. Overall, this study finds that stature estimates derived from anthropometric data provide good results and remove the necessity for dissection when working with fleshed body portions.

Analysis of Pilot-Related Equipment and Archaeological Strategy in the Recovery of Aircrew Losses from the Vietnam War

Determining the location and distribution of cockpit and aircrew-related equipment within the wider debris field of a military aircraft crash site is an essential first step in planning and executing the recovery of missing aircrew members presumed still to be on the site. Understanding the spatial relationship of these materials improves the likelihood of finding and recovering the remains of the aircrew during the excavation of an aircraft crash site. Since the greater portion of these unaccounted for crewmembers were involved in aircraft with single-seat cockpits or cockpits with two or three seats in tandem, pre-analysis of the debris pattern may be more-or-less straightforward. Larger, multiple-personnel aircraft, on the other hand, create a potentially more complex analytical situation given the aircrew's greater freedom of movement within the aircraft. Nevertheless, the same fundamental principles apply and, indeed, have been successfully so for some time in the civilian arena. But older aircraft crash sites, i.e., those dating to World War II, Korea, or the Vietnam conflict, have been and still are undergoing taphonomic processes that progressively alter these relationships. The following will illustrate that exchange of information between the anthropologist/archaeologist and the life-support analyst is required to maximize the effectiveness of field recovery and demonstrates the relationship between the recovery of life-support equipment and human remains and the effect that aircraft type has on this relationship.

Out of the blue: assessing military aircraft crash sites in England, 1912–45

Military aircraft crash sites are currently being reviewed by English Heritage's Monument Protection Programme. The aims are reviewed in a paper that shows the increasing interest in modern archaeology.

Excavation of a Vietnam-Era Aircraft Crash Site: Use of Cross-Cultural Understanding and Dual Forensic Recovery Methods

The excavation of a 23 year-old aircraft crash site in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the transformational processes preceding its excavation in 1995-1996 are detailed. The history of the site involved an initial catastrophic event, with subsequent reclamation and disturbances. Ultimately, a recovery effort by a joint U.S. team from the Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii (CILHI). Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA) and a Socialist Republic of Vietnam contingent yielded numerous human remains, personal effects, and life-support items from the crash site. This case study should be of interest to the increasing number of forensic anthropologists who carry out work in international contexts. The application of forensic anthropology in human rights abuse cases, for example in Rwanda, Argentina, and Bosnia, provide examples of such cross-cultural endeavors. Cultural factors act in the development of a site and should not be overlooked as significant taphonomic agents. The approach that an indigenous person takes to a crash site or mass grave may be quite different from our own approach, involving Western science. Holland, Anderson, and Mann (I) describe the postmortem alternation of exhumed and/or curated bone caused by indigenous South-east Asian peoples; the examples provided by these authors demonstrate how culture affects the treatment of what we would call "evidence." The international nature of an incident can add complicating "filters" to the reconstruction of events, since reclamation responses by indigenous people vary according to their interpretations of the scene. An investigating forensic anthropologist needs to understand the emic viewpoint (the insider's view), as cultural anthropologists do, when attempting to recover and reconstruct such an incident. In response to the cultural (and natural) taphonomic agents at work on such a site, the use of dual forensic recovery methods--simultaneously treating the investigation scene like an aircraft crash and a clandestine burial site--is advised. Employing a flexible set of methods will allow for maximal recovery of evidence.

Locating Crash Sites in Simulated Air-to-Ground Visual Search

Eye-movements of search-and-rescue specialists and trained spotters were filmed with a eye-marker camera during visual search. Thirty-six subjects searched five 16-mm color films of approaches to actual aircraft crash sites photographed from 150 m at 220 km/h and signalled any possible sightings obtained during the approach and fly-by of the sites. The 8-mm film records of eye-movements were analyzed to obtain information on crash site detections and the reporting of possible sightings as a function of search experience and visual coverage. Data on fixation durations and types of scan patterns are also presented.