May 30th, 1945,
just weeks after Germany's surrender.
In the Pacific, World War II rages on
and Allied forces are on the move.
Here, at the US Army Air Base in the city of Accra in West Africa,
Americans are being transported to new assignments in Europe.
But these are not your average soldiers.
They're members of the Women's Army Corps, or WAC for short.
And the WACs aren't just breaking glass ceilings,
they're shattering them
as trailblazers serving alongside their male counterparts
to stop Hitler and defeat the Axis powers.
These WACs are specialists working for Air Transport Command.
They manage air traffic control,
weather forecasting and other vital logistics.
By all accounts, this should be a routine flight.
After all, the Douglas C-47 Skytrain here
is a dependable workhorse for the Allies.
The weather is clear and the route ahead is well traveled.
But this particular flight will be anything but ordinary.
That's because nobody aboard will make it to their intended destination.
Shortly after takeoff...
...something goes terribly wrong.
Without warning, the plane careens at a sharp angle...
...and pitches toward the ocean below.
And then, silence.
Locals on a remote peninsula on the Ivory Coast
claimed to see the plane crashing into the ocean.
US forces will conduct a thorough search,
but no wreckage will be found.
No bodies recovered.
Even the story is destined to disappear,
fading from headline news to be all but forgotten.
The WACs and their three-man crew
will be listed as Missing In Action.
In fact, of the 27 American World War II servicewomen who are MIA,
18 of them are from this single crash.
The cause of this terrible crash and the fate of those aboard
is a mystery that demands to be remembered and investigated.
Can dedicated researchers uncover the true location of the accident?
Could technology image the remains of the sunken wreck?
And most importantly,
can these missing American heroes be found and brought home?
Only time will tell.
The past is all around us.
Oh, this is crazy.
A world of mystery.
-This is a plane. -Yeah. [laughs]
[Josh Gates] Danger.
We are about to be underwater.
Whoa!
And adventure.
It's just straight down!
[vocalizes]
I travel to the far corners of the earth
to uncover where legends end...
Yeah! [laughs]
...and history begins.
Okay, let's punch it.
I'm Josh Gates, and this is Expedition Unknown.
My mission begins at the US Army's Fort Gregg-Adams
a few hours south of DC.
Once on base, I make my way over to a one-of-a-kind museum,
which chronicle the long history
of women's service in our military.
Tracy.
-Hi, Josh. Nice to meet you. -Nice to meet you, too.
Welcome to the United States Army Women's Museum.
I am thrilled to be here, uh, because I have a lot to learn.
And I think a lot of people don't know enough about the Women's Army Corps.
So tell me, who were the WACs?
So the WACs were the first women
to serve in the Army with full military status.
-Okay. -[Tracy Bradford] It's an amazing story.
But I think, to understand the WACs,
we need to go back to the beginning, to the American Revolution.
So let's head this way.
Let's go all the way back. Come on.
[Tracy] Really, since the birth of the Army in 1775,
women have been finding ways to serve.
And so in those early days, how are they serving?
They're serving in very logistical roles,
important work for the Army.
They're serving as laundresses.
They're serving as cooks. As nurses. They're foraging.
-Then we see a big change around World War I. -Okay.
A great example is the "Hello Girls."
[Josh] The "Hello Girls" were French-speaking American women
brought overseas to help with communications during World War I.
It was the first time women had been used in forward service.
That's really gonna lay the groundwork
for what's gonna happen in World War II with our Women's Army Corps.
[reporter] American woman power
is a reserve that can win this war.
[Josh] The Women's Army Corps was founded in 1942 five months after Pearl Harbor
to bolster the war effort by enlisting women to work as cooks,
drivers, and offer communications and medical support.
The original call goes out for 1,000 WACs,
and over 30,000 women apply.
-So right out of the gate, 30,000 women apply to this. -[Tracy] Yes.
And the numbers are gonna grow exponentially throughout the war.
[Josh] Seeing these women in these uniforms
strikes kind of an emotional note for me.
My grandmother, who was British,
served in the UK equivalent of this, the Women's Royal Army Corps.
And we have this photo of her in uniform,
and during the 40s in the UK she was doing transfusions for soldiers
and supporting the war effort.
And the British women were actually an inspiration
for what was gonna happen in America.
Much of the Women's Army Corps was replicated
on the service of women like your grandmother.
There we go. Nice work, Grammy.
-Appreciate it. Grammy. Yeah. -Grammy. Yeah.
Good job, Grammy. All right. That's amazing.
That is incredible to hear.
Over the course of the war,
150,000 WACS were stationed all over the world,
from Europe to Africa to the Manhattan Project.
It was at the Accra Air Base in what is now Ghana,
that the 18 WACs were stationed
before their doomed flight to London.
So, Josh, welcome to the archives.
[Josh] Wow, look at all of this material. This is incredible.
This is the official WAC archive of the crash
and the women who tragically perished in it.
-May I? -Yes, please.
So, we've got literal headline news here.
Army Plane, 18 WACS Lost.
18 WACs Missing on Plane Trip in Africa.
Air and surface craft are searching for a missing plane
carrying 18 WACs and a crew of three.
The WACs are the first ever reported lost overseas.
This must have been a seismic event for the Women's Army Corps.
It really was. It was the largest loss of life
for the Women's Army Corps, all in one event.
This was national news,
as well as news in all of the hometowns of these women.
And yet so few people know this story today.
Right, I agree.
But we have to remember that there was a lot going on still
at this time in the war.
So Germany had just surrendered,
but we had a big fight left in the Pacific.
[Josh] With Germany's surrender,
the WACs had the opportunity to go home,
but many chose to stay on to support a devastated Europe,
or be redeployed to assignments in the Pacific.
The fateful flight in question was scheduled to travel from Accra Base,
with refueling and personnel stops in Liberia, Senegal,
Morocco and France before heading to the UK.
There were four C-47 aircraft leaving the base,
but only three of them made it.
Are these photos of the women from the crash?
Yes. In fact, here we have, um, the majority of Squadron D
-stationed in Accra. -[Josh] Wow.
So these are all the women that are stationed over there.
So presumably, the 18 WACs who died in this one crash are in this photo.
-[Tracy] Yes. -[Josh] Wow.
So we have here Corporal Velma H. Holden,
and her colleagues Private Flossie Flannery.
-That is the greatest name ever. I love that. -[Tracy chuckles]
Doris Cooper, and Frieda Friend was on the plane.
Right, so PFC Frieda Friend and her husband got married in the States.
He ends up being stationed in Accra.
And then later, she's sent to Accra, so they were there together.
And then she was on this plane that ended up crashing on the way to London,
And he found out about it back on the base.
-Yes, he did. -Wow, that's just terrible.
And her colleague is Helen F. Rozzelle,
who joined the WAC to take the place of a brother,
Lieutenant Richard Rozzelle,
a pilot whose plane was shot down off of Italy in '43.
So she's serving because she has a brother who's already been lost.
[Tracy] Exactly. So she actually does enlist
after her brother is Missing In Action.
-So currently, they are both on the MIA register. -[Josh] Wow.
And who's this?
[Tracy] So this is actually Helen Rozzelle here And Odessa Hollingsworth,
two of the women who were killed in the plane crash.
Look at these two women just hanging out on the beach in West Africa.
What a cool photo this is.
[Tracy] So there are trailblazers
-and that there are women in the Army. -[Josh] Yeah.
They're serving their nation and they're also on a great adventure.
[Josh] That's right.
And as to this plane, it really just seems like
it vanishes off the face of the earth.
You look at the news report, and it says the plane was last reported
over British West Africa, about 150 miles west of Accra,
and then nothing.
So they had a normal takeoff.
They... they did their first check in
and then there was a frantic mayday call.
But in the mayday, the pilot doesn't say what's happening.
Does not identify the problem.
So then a major search-and-rescue operation is launched,
and it goes on for over a week.
They send out planes. They send out ships.
They found absolutely nothing. No human remains. No debris.
So it is a true mystery.
And a mystery I hope that can be solved.
And we hope so, too. This is an important story.
And we would be very happy to bring resolution and recognition
to the service of these women.
[Josh] To assist in that effort, I travel west.
I need to understand what I'm hunting for...
...by getting my eyes on a C-47,
or better yet, flying in one.
That's veteran pilot Mike Nightengale.
In the co-pilot seat is Steve Rose.
You can't make these names up.
In the navigator seat behind them is me.
And we're aboard one of the most famous aircraft models in history, the C-47.
Nicknamed "The Gooney Bird,"
almost 10,000 of these were built during World War II.
This one rolled off the production line in March of 1945,
just two months before the crash I'm investigating.
We're in the desert outside of Palm Springs, California,
and in a moment, this £25,000 antique
is hopefully gonna get airborne.
Buckle up.
[Mike Nightengale speaking]
My iPhone.
[laughs]
Powered by two massive Pratt and Whitney air-cooled engines,
providing 2,400 horsepower,
the C-47 is no puddle jumper.
With a wingspan of nearly 100 feet,
she could carry 28 fully-equipped paratroopers
or up to £10,000 of cargo.
The C-47 served all over the globe during the war,
including at Normandy on D-Day.
General Eisenhower himself singled it out as one of our most valuable assets.
[Josh] I'm flying in a vintage C-47
over the deserts of Palm Springs, California.
A plane nearly identical to this one
crashed into the ocean off West Africa in 1945,
carrying 18 members of the Women's Army Corps.
Now, pilots Mike Nightengale and Steve Rose
walk me through what they think could have caused the crash.
[Josh] Feathering the propeller of a dead engine
turns the blades parallel to the airflow
to reduce drag and help the plane stay in the air.
But the feathering control on the C-47 is a bit fickle,
and it might have become stuck in its normal position.
[Josh speaking]
[Steve speaking]
[Josh] But the engines are just one potential culprit.
A little noticed line in a maintenance report
from the day of the doomed flight
makes Steve think the landing gear
could have played a role in the crash.
The landing gear stuck in the down position
would have caused considerable drag on the plane,
making it much more difficult to fly.
Also, the reality of war meant that pilots were often flying
without extensive experience in complex emergency procedures.
The fateful flight of the WACs was manned by a good pilot,
but one with less than 50 hours behind the stick.
Now that I know my target,
it's time to join the team hunting for the long-lost plane of the WACs.
And to do that, the search moves halfway around the planet
to the place where their plane disappeared.
I leave Palm Springs and embark on a 19-hour flight
from the west coast of the US to the west coast of Africa.
Welcome to the Republic of Cote d'Ivoire,
which translates to Ivory Coast.
a moniker that dates back to French and Portuguese traders
who once shipped untold tons of ivory from Africa's western shores.
Five hundred years later, the exports have thankfully changed,
but business is still booming here in the city of Abidjan.
One business in particular dominates the modern economy,
and it's pretty sweet.
This is the world's largest exporter of cacao,
which means if you have ever had a piece of chocolate,
odds are it originated from here.
It also means that my diet is about to go way off the rails.
The local Bushman's Cafe
has some of the finest examples of the national product
for me to sample.
That's the best thing I've ever eaten.
I'm never leaving here.
What else do you have? Just keep bringing it.
Just bring everything over.
Yep. Thank you very much.
I'll just be right here if you need me.
The chocolate made in Cote d'Ivoire is enjoyed around the world,
but if you're looking for some joy that's slightly less caloric...
-Bonjour. -Bonjour.
...just head to the Marche de Treichville,
Abidjan's busy street market.
[singing in native language]
What's up? What's up?
Party right now.
[all cheering]
[Josh] As much as I'd love to stay with the flash mob here in the capital,
my final destination is quite a ways out of town.
So I strap in for a six-hour drive up the coast
to meet a group dedicated to finding the lost C-47.
All right. Well, the team preparing to mount a search
for the missing plane are old friends.
And they're staging their operation
near the suspected crash site about 200 miles west of here.
Let's rock and roll.
♪♪ Let's get The motor running ♪
♪♪ I got places to go ♪
[Josh] Outside of Abidjan, the modern cityscape
is quickly replaced by a blur of roadside villages,
and eventually by nothing but humid jungle.
♪♪ No matter what it takes I'll get to you ♪
♪♪ No ocean too wide No mountain too far ♪
♪♪ I'll run all night ♪
♪♪ To get to you ♪
Well, welcome to the city of San Pedro.
You know, last night I dreamt of San Pedro.
Sorry, that's a Madonna song.
The sun rings through my ears, whatever that means,
as I find the city's commercial port,
where I have a reunion planned with the members of Project Recover.
Hey.
-Mark, good to see you again. Yeah, pleasure. -Good to see you again, too.
[Josh] Meet Project Recover co-founder, Mark Moline.
Historian, Colin Colburn.
And underwater archaeologist, Drew Pietruszka.
Project Recover is a nonprofit group
dedicated to searching for Missing In Action Americans from World War II.
I recently worked with them in Micronesia,
where in 1944, 42 American planes
and over 200 pilots went Missing In Action.
We located a previously lost Japanese Zero aircraft...
-Nobody has seen that. -Yeah, until us.
...and an American SBD Dauntless
that hadn't been seen in nearly 80 years.
The first American aircraft ever located in Truk Lagoon. We can check it off the list.
[Josh] It was a huge honor to take part in such a historic expedition,
which is why I'm back for an equally important mission.
Why do we only meet on remote docks?
-I don't know. [chuckles] -We're just adding continents as we go.
Yeah, I know. So we got another one here. Welcome to Africa, right?
Tell me at least this is gonna be an easy mission.
I don't think so. This is not gonna be an easy one.
This is really uncharted waters here.
[Josh] So let's talk about this.
In terms of where to look for this plane and these women,
what do we know?
I was able to get the, uh, accident report from the, uh, Air Force archives.
-[Josh] Okay. -And that provided us a lot more information.
-You have it. -Down to an X on the map.
-A literal X on the map. -A literal X on the map.
Wow, look at this.
So this is a copy of the original accident report.
It says the plane takes off normally.
And then it says no messages were received until 09:20
when Roberts Field heard a series of mayday report
from the aircraft.
Roberts Field in Liberia was the plane's first scheduled stop
on its way to the UK.
And it was the tower at Roberts
that received their mayday signal.
And a series of maydays were repeated for a period of five minutes on voice
with no pause at any time in order to receive an answer.
So what? Just for 5 minutes they were calling mayday?
A key in the radio.
We don't really know what happened,
-but five minutes in an aircraft emergency is forever. -Right.
It's a long time for them to have been in trouble.
[Josh] The mayday signal is received by the team in the radio tower
who uses a signal-direction finder
to determine the plane's bearing, 109 degrees.
We have a bearing.
Not only do we have the bearing,
we also have a map with an eyewitness sighting of the loss.
We have eyewitness sightings.
-[Colin Colbourn] Yes. -Okay.
Josh, look here.
A literal X on the map,
-and it's marked where natives saw a crash. -[Mark Moline] Right.
[Josh] The accident report describes an account
from the indigenous people in a coastal village
who claimed to witness a plane crashing
not far from the bearing line of the C-47.
Investigators brought one witness by boat to the site,
about a half mile from a place called Drewin Point,
where they discovered a mysterious oil slick on the water's surface.
But no survivors were found,
no bodies recovered.
The search was ultimately called off,
but the bearing and the eyewitness account
will allow us to pick up the trail.
So, it seems like we're headed to Drewin Point.
-Third piece of evidence. -[both] Yeah.
Who else has searched here?
Nobody.
-Literally nobody since '45? -Yeah.
-Not since the war. -No.
I've been all over the world, Josh,
and this is one case where we're going somewhere
where I have no idea what to expect.
There's no recreational divers around here.
Nobody's been underwater, knows the conditions, nothing.
Right, forget the wreck, we don't know what's there at all.
-Nobody dives out here. -No, real mystery.
[Josh] Back in 1945, there was no infrastructure
to mount an underwater search.
Even today, we've had to ship in our own scuba tanks
and an air compressor to dive.
We've also brought in underwater sonar technology
that has never been applied here before.
Okay, should we get out there and try and solve the mystery?
-Let's do it. -Let's go.
Let's go. Come on.
Project Recover has a pair of research vessels
waiting to bring us to our search zone.
We speed out on to the open ocean,
the first team to look for this plane
and her vanished passengers in almost 80 years.
So, Josh, this is Drewin Point right here.
[Josh] On a boat off of West Africa's Ivory Coast,
I'm with a team from Project Recover
searching for a World War II plane that disappeared in 1945.
It carried 18 members of the trailblazing Women's Army Corps,
still listed as missing in action.
But now, an accident report from the original investigation
is providing new clues about where the plane may have crashed.
Okay, so this is our big geographical marker.
[Colin] That's right. So a half mile off of this point
is supposedly where our aircraft crashed.
And we can see a fishing village in here.
This is where eyewitnesses were?
[Colin] Someone from this village flagged down American searchers
to say that they witnessed the crash.
Boy, it's so tantalizing to think that
somewhere around us, underneath us,
this wreck exists. It's just waiting.
It's just waiting and, you know,
we're the first ones to come looking for it since 1945.
And now we just gotta find it.
When the WAC's plane went down in this remote area,
the Army did their best to conduct a search and rescue operation to find it.
They had the same bearing and the same witness statement we do.
But we have something that they did not,
state of the art 21st century sonar.
That tech is brought onboard
by the remainder of the Project Recover team.
Josh, you remember Leila Character from Micronesia?
-Of course. Great to see you. -Yeah, you too.
I wanted to also introduce Erik White.
He's our senior engineer.
Nice to meet you. I assume it's tech time here?
-It's tech time. -It's tech time, all right.
I've seen this very dangerous-looking box before.
-Should we see what's inside of it? -Yes.
[Josh] We unpack the team's precious cargo.
Okay, here we go.
It is something to behold.
Okay, the beast.
We call this an AUV. This is an autonomous underwater vehicle.
-We're not towing this thing. It's going off on its own. -Correct.
And once we're in the water, Leila, what's the mission?
Once we're in the water, we've preprogrammed it, so it knows where to go.
It's basically going to follow a mow-the-lawn pattern,
where it's collecting data up and down these rows.
It sends out a beam of sound, that beam of sound hits the ground.
If the ground is hard, the beam of sound appears bright.
If it's soft, it appears very dark.
So, when we look at the image, we'd be looking for something very bright
-for an aircraft because it would be hard. -[Josh] Right.
The most identifiable features likely to survive the crash of the WAC's C-47...
[loud crash]
...would have been the twin Pratt & Whitney engines.
But parts of the hull and tail sections
were constructed of steel as well
and may also be preserved.
So once this is in the water, how are you communicating with it?
How are you getting data as to its position?
So when it's in the water, we communicate through our Ranger system.
The vehicle will send us information every minute.
But you don't actually get the sonar data, right?
You actually have to recover the unit for that?
-Correct. -Okay, great. Well, let's get it in the water.
Okay. Walking it over.
-Ready? -[Erik] Yep.
[Josh] Okay, she's in the water.
She's away.
We deploy the AUV, aptly nicknamed "Hunter."
And in moments, it dives beneath the surface and begins its scan,
systematically covering the preprogrammed search zone.
It's like a Roomba,
if your Roomba costs three quarters of a million dollars
and could map 100 ft below your floor.
It's going to take six long hours for Hunter
to cover the grid we've given it,
which is based on 80-year-old intel.
We'd love to confirm that this fishing village
is the same one investigators encountered after the crash
to know if we've sent our AUV searching in the right spot.
So, Colin has an idea to get more recent data.
I say we head ashore, go to the village,
see if we can find anyone, fishermen, older folks,
who may have information.
All right, now we just need to get to shore.
To get to the village, Colin hails a ride for us.
Bonjour.
Let's call it a canoe-ber.
We arrive at shore and step out...
All right, merci. Thank you.
...into another time.
Here, on the edge of the continent,
a traditional fishing community
living as they have for generations.
Isolated on one of the most gorgeous beaches I've ever seen.
On any other day, I'd be hunting for a hammock,
but we're here on more serious business.
All right. Well, we're ashore.
Now the question is, is there anybody left here that was alive back then?
-Bonjour. Bonjour, monsieur. -Bonjour.
[Josh] Anyone alive here that could have witnessed the crash
would have to be well into their 80s.
So, we asked to speak to the oldest member of the community.
-...Monogaga? -[speaks other language]
[dubbed English] In the village, an old man.
We have a man here who is nearly 100 years old.
[in English] So 100, well 100 would be huge.
-[Colin] That's what we're looking for. -Yeah, okay.
-[speaks other language] -[man] Yes, let's go.
-[Josh in English] Let's go. Please. -[Colin] All right.
[indistinct chatter]
-[Colin] Bonjour, messieurs. -Bonjour.
-[Colin] Ca va? -Oui, ca va.
-Bonjour. Bonjour, monsieur. -Bonjour.
Bonjour.
[in English] Thank you for taking a few minutes
to talk with us. I appreciate it.
Did you grow up here in Monogaga?
[dubbed English] Yes, I was born here.
And I have lived here my entire life.
[in English] In 1945,
an American airplane was flying
just off the village here and crashed.
Do you remember a plane crash here?
I didn't see it,
but I remember older people here talking about it.
They said something had crashed into the water.
So, you heard about the story.
It was something people were talking about.
Yes.
Something crashed into the water?
That's right. A huge plane just flew off the Point and went in.
Do you know if anything washed ashore,
like wreckage and metal and things like that?
No nothing.
It was like it never happened.
It just disappeared into the ocean.
Nothing.
Thank you very much for talking with us.
Merci beaucoup.
The village elder has confirmed that
we are searching in the right place.
And further, the fact that no debris or remains
washed ashore after the event
may mean the plane went down relatively intact.
Which could make it easier for the sonar to image.
Meanwhile, out on the water, Hunter finishes scanning the search zone,
and the team scrambles to retrieve the AUV and extract its data.
Colin and I rush back to the boat
to see what, if anything, it discovered.
-Okay, here we go. -Yeah.
All right, first question, is there data?
Yeah, we got some data. And in fact, about eight square kilometers of it.
Great, that's a lot of seafloor.
So, is there anything on it?
We definitely have some promising targets.
-Okay, take me through it. What do we got? -[Leila] All right.
[Josh] These are individual sonar lanes we're seeing?
[Leila] These are individual sonar lanes.
So, we've got these funny looking bright spots here--
-Ooh, this here. -[Leila] Yeah.
Now, what's really interesting here is
this linear pattern of debris.
It does look like a scatter of objects.
[Mark] Yeah, it's pieces of something,
and they're circular, it looks like.
And they are just so contrasted
-against the seafloor, right? -[Mark] Yeah.
I mean, they're just sticking out like these
-bright circular targets. -[Mark] Bright-- Yeah.
[Josh] Colin, what do you make of the fact that
we just have these isolated individual objects here?
[Colin] In most plane crashes, we're not gonna have
-something that looks exactly like a plane on the bottom. -Right.
It's going to get broken up and scattered.
So, this actually looks like a debris field that we might see.
So definitely worth investigating?
Hundred percent. We need to go down and look at what this thing is.
Okay. Anything else to look at?
Yeah, we have one target that looks really interesting.
-Okay, what do you got? -Yeah, let's take a look.
[excitedly] Ooh, what is that?
[Josh] That's a big shadow.
When you see a shadow like that,
it means that something's really pronounced
and high off the seafloor.
[Josh] I'm off the coast of West Africa
in an area where almost 80 years ago,
a C-47 loaded with members of the US Women's Army Corps
vanished into thin air,
leaving 18 WACs and three crewmen missing in action.
Now though, a sonar scan might add a new chapter to their mystery.
Any idea how high this object is that's sticking up?
[Mark] It's about 10-15 ft off the bottom,
-really big. Sticking up, yeah. -[Josh] Sticking up 10-15 ft.
This looks a lot more like something we might expect to find
-if there's large pieces of wreckage. -Right.
These are large objects that could be
reflective of a large aircraft like we're looking for.
Drew, what do you think? Could that be wreckage?
Yeah. I mean, I think it's definitely possible.
I think we need to suit up and go for a dive
-and put our eyes on it. -For sure.
Well, we got a number of targets to look at.
We got our work cut out for us.
Yeah, two dives.
[Josh] We motor out to the coordinates of the AUV's first sonar hit.
Seventy-five meters.
[Josh] As we approach, we prep a shot line,
a weighted marker that we can follow to the bottom.
Even in rough ocean currents, the shot line will ensure
that we don't descend far from the target.
Four, three, two-- Drop, drop, drop!
[Josh] With the shot line in the water,
Drew, Mark and I prepare to dive down
to what appears to be
a debris field on the bottom of the ocean.
All right, what's our move?
We're gonna start with just these circular targets
that are kind of in a line,
-and just see what they are. -Right.
Let's do it.
[Josh over radio]
Topside copies. Divers heading down the shot line, over.
[Josh speaking]
[Mark over radio]
[Josh speaking]
How's the visibility down there? Over.
[Josh speaking]
[Mark speaks]
[Josh speaks]
To safely and efficiently explore around our target,
Drew clips a guide reel to our shot marker,
and we begin to swim outward.
[Mark speaks]
[Josh speaking]
[Mark speaks]
[Josh speaks]
[Mark speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Mark speaking]
[Josh speaks]
[Mark speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Mark speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Mark speaks]
[Josh speaks]
Topside copies, not wreckage.
That's disappointing to hear.
[over radio]
[Mark speaking]
[Josh speaking]
We may have pulled a lot of "mussels," but we're hardly sore.
Whoo.
We return to the boat and aim for the coordinates of our second sonar hit.
Which has a very different profile from the first one.
Whatever this target is, it looks like it's sticking
way up off the bottom.
-Way off, prominent shadow. -[Josh] Yeah.
This is not a bed of mussels.
-No. -[Josh] No, this is something.
The question is what. Here we go.
[Josh over radio]
[Mark over radio]
[Josh speaking]
[Mark speaking]
[Josh] The current is powerful enough to pull us off the line
and sweep us out to sea,
so we descend as fast as we can.
Divers, topside. How's the descent looking?
[diver over radio]
[Josh speaking]
[Colin over radio]
Low visibility. Be safe down there, over.
[Josh speaking]
Well, whatever this is, it should be sticking way off the bottom,
so hopefully you run into it, over.
[Josh] With conditions this murky,
it's risky for all of us to be groping in the dark
without getting separated.
So, Drew clips on to the shot line
and explores in a wide circle around us.
We watch him disappear into the gloom and wait.
[Mark speaks]
[Josh speaks]
[Mark speaking]
[Josh speaks]
[Josh] I thought I knew about every possible way to enjoy chocolate.
[both] Cheers.
Cocoa tea.
But at the Bushman's Cafe,
I learn about a serious blind spot in my repertoire.
Okay, this is for the adults.
You can call it the moonshine cacao.
-Chocolate moonshine? -Yeah.
-This is chocolate hooch? -Yes, it is.
Okay. Is it strong?
-Oh, boy. -[chuckles]
-[loudly] Ooh! -[laughs]
How you feeling?
I'm feeling like I want a bottle of this.
This tastes like chocolate rum.
How do I get a crate of this
loaded into my luggage?
Actually, we never actually thought about selling it so--
You've never thought about selling this?
-No, actually. [laughs] -Let me help you get rich right now.
Put this in a bottle.
It's my first time getting drunk on chocolate.
[laughs]
I recommend it.
[Josh over radio]
Topside copies, something big.
Can you tell what it is?
[Josh] In the waters off of West Africa,
I'm diving with the team from Project Recover
to locate a plane missing since the final days of World War II.
One which was transporting 18 members
of the trailblazing Women's Army Corps.
[Mark over radio]
[Josh over radio]
Copy that. Natural feature, over.
[Mark over radio]
[Josh speaks]
[Mark speaking]
[Josh speaking]
[Mark speaks]
[Josh speaks]
Whoo.
-All right, that was a heartbreaker. -Yeah, it was.
You know, first of all, horrible visibility.
[both] Terrible.
But then out of the mist, you just see this dark shape rising up.
-[Mark] Yeah. -[Josh] But definitely not a plane.
We return to our vessel off the coast of Monogaga without our C-47.
When the Army searched here in 1945,
there was almost no infrastructure,
and little has changed today.
This is a supremely hard place to investigate.
Which is why nobody has in 80 years.
And that in itself, is why we're here.
At Project Recover, our goal is to bring our MIAs home.
And it's also really important for us to respect the memory of the fallen.
Yeah, and I think a real accomplishment here is
-simply getting this story out there for people. -Yeah.
Not just the sacrifice of these women,
but also just the incredible dedication
and accomplishment of the Women's Army Corps.
It's a story that not enough people know,
-and I hope that we've brought some attention to it. -Yeah.
And it's not the end of the search. This is just the beginning.
We're gonna keep looking for them.
This is a special group of women who could have chosen to go home,
but they wanted to go back to the war front and keep fighting.
And we wanna respect that, and make sure we find 'em and bring 'em home.
-Absolutely. -So, Josh, what we'd like to do now is
hold up the American flag and read off the names of the three crew
and 18 Women's Army Corps soldiers that were aboard this aircraft.
[reading] Alfred R. Ellis, Robert E. Mulhern, George A. Shiffman,
Doris F. Cooper, Velma E. Holden,
Flossie D. Flannery, Evelyn L. McBride,
Rose F. Puchalla, Mildred E. Rice,
Helen F. Rozzelle, Ruth E. Warlick,
Alice D. King, Alice P. McKinney,
Rose Brohinsky, Frieda C. Friend,
Mary M. Gollinger, Odessa L. Hollingsworth,
Wilma E. Liles, Leona M. Seyfert,
Bonnie L. Williams, and Pearl Roomsburg.
[Josh] These 18 brave women had to fight just to serve their country.
They saw a war that engulfed the world, and they rushed to volunteer.
And they gave their lives to make our world safer today.
At the beginning of the war, America didn't want women in the army.
By the end, Douglas MacArthur called the WACs, "My best soldiers."
The Women's Army Corps continued to serve after World War II until the 1970s,
when women were fully integrated in the US Army.
Today, women make up more than 16% of our nation's armed forces.
More than 9,000 women have earned Combat Action Badges.
The journey that started with women like the 18 MIAs
on an ill-fated C-47, continues today.
And while the hunt for their plane goes on,
the most important duty we have is to ensure
that their story is remembered
so that their service and sacrifice
will never be forgotten.