Bid to solve war mystery
By
DAVE WILSON
A week on the West Coast may sound like a relaxing break from work, but for more than 30 military physical education instructors, their West Coast sojourn this week means hacking through dense bush in a bid to solve a 43-year-old mystery. The team, drawn from the school of physical education at R.N.Z.A.F. Base Wigram, is hunting for a wartime aircraft crash site that holds the key to the disappearance of a pilot in 1944. . Neither the pilot, Pilot Officer Brian Barstow, no his gull-winged Corsair fighter have been found, although the Air Force has since continued to make occasional aerial sweeps of the rough terrain between Murchison and Westport.
This week’s search is the most intensive hunt, with the searchers divided into five-man teams ■combing the bush. The area was so rugged each team had to be winched down from an Iroquois helicopter.
The search has been combined with a bushcraft and survival training exercise which the students, drawn from all three branches of the armed forces, undergo as part of the physical fitness course. ■
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Press, 22 January 1988, Page 2
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184Bid to solve war mystery Press, 22 January 1988, Page 2
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