Since WWII.
I had no idea it was that many. Not just on land but at sea. That a government agency exists to find them is no mystery. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency sends out teams based upon whatever records they can find. It appears to be a daunting task.
The project began after the Vietnam War, when families of missing soldiers pressured the government to figure out what had become of their loved ones. Hundreds of remains from that conflict have since been found and returned to relatives. “Because of that success, later on Congress added the Korean War,” says Kelly McKeague, a former Air Force major general who is director of the DPAA. “Then other families started asking, ‘What about us?’”
The agency is now officially tasked with providing “the fullest possible accounting” of the fates of missing personnel from the Second World War through today’s conflicts. As many as 39,000 of the total were lost at sea, and the agency does not expect to ever recover their remains. But that still leaves a staggering caseload.
Many searches begin in musty archives and digital databases. DPAA historians and archivists pore over battle reports, flight and ship logs, and other documents to figure out where those soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen are likely to have actually died. The Hot as Hell crash site, though, was handed to the agency: Clayton Kuhles, an Arizona mountaineer and self-appointed MIA hunter, found some of the plane’s wreckage with the help of a local guide in 2006.
Read more about this @ Some 83,000 members of the U.S. military are missing. This group tries to bring them home.
