Remains of missing Spitfire pilot feared to have ditched in the Channel found 70 years later in French farmer's field... and now his family can lay him to rest with full honours

Ever since Sergeant William Smith's spitfire was shot down over the English Channel during a World War Two dogfight, his family have hoped that one day his body could be found.The brave pilot was presumed to have crashed and died in the middle of the sea after his plane was targeted by an enemy aircraft in 1942.

For the next seven decades his relatives held on to the slim hope that a fishing trawler might one day drag up the wreckage so that they could bury their loved one.

Incredibly, their wish has now come true after Sgt Smith's remains were unearthed in his wrecked Spitfire - in a French farmer's field 30 miles inland.

It was discovered by a British historian and film crew who were looking for the wreckage of another downed Spitfire whose pilot had been taken prisoner by the Germans.

Their research and eye-witness accounts of a plane crashing led them to excavate a site near Cassel in northern France.

Unsurprisingly, they found parts of a Spitfire 25ft down but were shocked when they also discovered the skeletal remains of the pilot.

And the mystery of who the dead airman was was soon cleared up when a dogtag with Sgt Smith's name and service number on was also discovered.

Parts of a Spitfire were found by the search party, but they were stunned to also discover skeletal remains

It is assumed the pilot was either knocked unconscious or killed in his cockpit at 20,000ft over the Channel and his plane flew 50 miles out of control before crashing.

Now the hero's younger brother Bert, 84, is preparing to lead his family at a funeral with full military honours that is due to be held for Sgt Smith in Cassel on Thursday.

Mr Smith's son Mark, 55, said: 'My family had assumed that my uncle had been shot down and he and his plane had ended up in the Channel.

'When my father found out Bill's body had been found without hearing anything for 69 years he was stunned, shocked and some what relieved at the same time.

'We are relieved to finally find out what happened to Bill and it is important that there will be a resting place for him where family members can go and visit and pay their respects for years to come.'

Sgt Smith, from Melbourne, joined the Royal Australian Air Force before going off to war in 1941.

He was stationed at Redhill in Surrey with 457 Squadron and on May 9, 1942, his Spitfire helped escort a number of Boston bombers in a raid over northern France.

On their return to England the squadron was attacked by up to 30 Fock-Wulf Fw 190s midway between Mardyck and Dover.

Sgt Smith, who was 24 at the time, was last sighted at 20,000ft in combat with a number of Fw 190s and wasn't seen again.

Mr Smith, a school teacher, said: 'Bill's disappearance had a devastating impact on the family, especially his mother Freda who was very close to him.

'She used to scan and re-scan the photos of prisoners of war in the newspapers and look for someone that looked like Bill and would almost be convinced that some of them were him.
'She came to terms that he had died after the war when there was no returning hero.
'Dad didn't talk a lot about him but Bill's picture was always present on the mantlepiece of my family home as we were growing up.'

Send-off: This image shows an identification disc belonging to Sergeant Smith. The hero's younger brother Bert, 84, is preparing to lead his family at a funeral with full military honours

Historian Andy Saunders, from Hastings, East Sussex, found Sgt Smith's remains last November during the excavation of farm land.

Mr Saunders and a film crew from the Discovery History Channel were searching for a Spitfire that had been donated by the Parker Pen Company at the time. He said: 'The pilot of the Parker Pen Spitfire bailed out and that plane came down about two weeks before or after Sgt Smith's. 'All our research pointed us to this site for the other Spitfire.

'We had removed various parts of the aircraft when we started to find human remains.
'As soon we realised that we stopped work straight away and called the MoD in England and the local mayor.

'Obviously we hadn't expected to find any remains and there were no records at all for Sgt Smith in the area because he disappeared over the English Channel.
'We found his identity disc which was on a chain along with a lucky sixpence and a St Christopher.

'We have been in contact with William Smith's family and they are delighted that we have been able to solve this mystery.'

Sgt Smith's funeral will take place on Thursday at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission section of Cassel cemetery.

A documentary on the find and the funeral is due to be broadcast on Discovery History on Friday.

17 April 2012

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2131075/Remains-missing-Spitfire-pilot-feared-ditched-Channel-70-years-later-French-farmers-field--family-lay-rest-honours.html#ixzz1sK5umQcY

8 die in Jalandhar factory collapse

Jalandhar, April 16 - At least eight employees of a blanket-manufacturing unit were killed and 55 others hurt after a four-storey building in Focal Point Extension here collapsed late last night. Several workers are feared trapped inside even as the rescue operations are on.

Tragedy struck at Shital Fibres around 11.30 pm on Sunday when over 300 employees were working over-time, according to some workers. Most of the employees were migrants from UP and Bihar.

Factory owner Shital Vij said the exact number of workers in the unit could not be ascertained as the attendance register lay buried as well. He said around 70 workers could have been inside when tragedy struck. National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) Commandant SK Verma said two bodies had been extricated whereas six were spotted under a collapsed beam.

While the exact cause of the accident is not known, NDRF Assistant Commandant Musaphir Ram said the building seemed to have collapsed due to poor construction. Shital Fibres MD Abhishek Vij said the factory was constructed four years ago. Relatives and friends of the trapped workers complained of the tardy pace of rescue operations and raised slogans against the administration. Police Commissioner Gaurav Yadav managed to persuade the mob to allow smooth conduct of operations.

Residents living near the factory were among the first to reach the site along with police and fire brigade personnel. The Army and the NDRF were called in after Deputy Commissioner Priyank Bharti and other officers realised the magnitude of the disaster.

Kuldeep Patial of nearby Guru Amar Dass Nagar told The Tribune that he along with 10-odd youths of the locality reached the accident site shortly after hearing a loud noise. They rescued 10 workers.

The entire 30-member staff of the local fire brigade led by additional divisional fire officer Kashmir Singh began rescue operation soon after. “Firemen reached the spot within five minutes of getting information and saved many precious lives,” Kashmir Singh said.

The Punjab Government has announced an ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh to the next of the kin of each of the deceased, Rs 65,000 for the seriously hurt and Rs 45,000 for those who sustained minor injuries. Of the injured, 16 have been discharged, whereas 39 are still in hospitals.

The injured were rushed to the Devi Talab Mandir Hospital and Civil Hospital here. Factory owner Sheetal Vij is also president of the Devi Talab Mandir Management Committee that runs the hospital of the same name. Several teams of NGOs, including Pahal and sewadars of Dera Sacha Sauda, also joined rescue work. A 45-member NDRF team led by its Assistant Commandant Musaphir Ram reached the site from its Bathinda Headquarters. It started rescue operations at about 6.30 am.

“Rescue operations are on in full swing, but teams are finding it difficult to reach the buried survivors,” Musaphir Ram said, when asked about the slow pace of rescue operation.“We are using various type of equipment to tear through the debris and reach the trapped persons and have rescued several workers,” he said.

A column of army engineers of Vajra Corps led by Colonel Simrajeet Singh also reached the spot at 7.30 am. It also pressed sniffer dogs into service to reach out to survivors. After initial operations, another NRDF team was rushed in from Bathinda, which reached the site today afternoon.

Divisional Commissioner Anurag Verma and Deputy Commissioner Priyank Bharti were supervising rescue operations. The NDRF Assistant Commandant said it would take at least two days to clear the debris and know the exact loss of human life and property.

The Divisional Commissioner has been asked to look into the incident. Soon after visiting the site, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, SK Sandhu, said building experts would assist in the probe. He also said that all commercial and industrial buildings in the state would be put through a safety review to avoid recurrence of an untoward incident.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2012/20120417/main1.htm

Deadly chase: Arizona desert becomes immigrant deathtrap

Arizona remains the deadliest state for illegal border crossings, with 71 bodies recovered in the past six months alone. Beefed-up US security along the Mexican border does not stop immigrants from trying – instead, it pushes them into a killer desert.

­With its rocky valleys and spectacular peaks, the Sonora desert in Arizona is said to be a treasure of the American southwest. But at the same time is a frontier land where a deadly conflict is underway.

Every year thousands of people from Mexico and other parts of Latin America try to make it to the US by illegally crossing the border. But scores of people never reach the American dream for which they risked their lives.

In 2011, there were nearly 200 (figures vary from 183 to 192) migrant body remains recovered. Even though the number has decreased about 20 per cent compared to 2010, the rate of migrant deaths remains consistently high.

”It’s deadlier. The border is absolutely deadlier,” says Kat Rodriguez, from the Arizona NGO Coalición de Derechos Humanos.

More than 6,000 have died along the US-Mexico border since 1994, according to human rights groups. That is when Operation Gatekeeper – a program fortifying the international crossing with high-priced fencing, thousands of agents, and high tech surveillance – was launched.

“It’s almost a mass disaster situation,” says Dr. Gregory Hess, chief medical examiner at Pima County, Arizona.

The disaster Hess faces is the growing number of unidentified bodies being found in Arizona’s southern desert. Bodies are stacked high in a fight for space – and perhaps even a proper burial.

“It becomes not so much an effort to determine why that person died… it becomes an effort to sort out who this is,” Hess says.

Many remains found in the desert are merely bone fragments, making them difficult to identify. In other cases, remains of the missing are never found.

The Pima County cooler at the Medical Examiner’s office has a capacity to hold hundreds of bodies. The facility is much larger than others around the country, specifically because of the issue of bodies being found along the border.

Even so, the lack of storage is a major headache.

“We had 300 remains. We had a refrigerated truck parked out here to help us with the overflow,” Hess says.

April 16, 2012

http://www.freedominfonetwork.org/profiles/blogs/deadly-chase-arizona-desert-becomes-immigrant-deathtrap

Five more Concordia victims identified

The bodies of two Germans, two Americans and an Italian recovered from the wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise liner have been formally identified, local authorities said in a statement on Tuesday.

The corpses, which were recovered in March, were identified as those of Christina and Norbert Ganz from Germany, Barbara and Gerald Heil from the United States, and an Italian member of the ship's crew, Giuseppe Girolamo.

The bodies were among five that were recovered in the past three weeks from the liner, which capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio after hitting rocks on January 13.

Two are still unaccounted for.

A total of 32 people are believed to have died when the ship crashed into rocks off an Italian island in January, with two people -- an Italian passenger and Indian crew member - still unaccounted for, according to the prefecture in Grosseto.

Of the 30 identified victims, 12 are German, six French, six Italian, two Peruvian, two American, one Hungarian and one from Spain.

The Costa Concordia, which had 4 229 people on board, ran aground and keeled over, prompting a panicked evacuation in which dozens of people threw themselves into the sea.

Nine people are under investigation for manslaughter, including captain Francesco Schettino, who is also accused of abandoning ship before everyone on board could be evacuated.

Three of those being investigated are executives from the ship's company, Costa Crociere, Europe's biggest cruise operator. - AFP

April 17 2012 at 12:18pm

http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/five-more-concordia-victims-identified-1.1277739

Landslide Kills 6 in Southwest China's Chongqing

CHONGQING, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Six people were killed and another two wounded in a mountain collapse Saturday morning in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, local authorities said.
A section of a mountain near the Egongyan Bridge collapsed at 1 a.m. Saturday, crushing nearby work sheds and killing six people inside, said an official with the city government.

The victims were employees of a construction company and a lighting company.

The injured only suffered minor wounds, said the official.

Authorities are probing the cause of the tragedy.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-04/14/c_131526537.htm

12 confirmed dead in NE China colliery flood

CHANGCHUN, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Rescuers have retrieved the bodies of 12 colliery workers who died in last week's coal mine flood in northeast China's Jilin Province, authorities said Monday.

Eight bodies were retrieved from the pit of the Fengxing Coal Mine in the city of Jiaohe early on Monday, 10 days after the accident, the local work safety bureau said in a press release.

The statement said that at least 20,000 cubic meters of water poured into the shaft on April 6. Of the 70 people working in the pit, 58 escaped.

Rescuers spent about a week draining flood water from the shaft before they were able to reach the first four trapped miners, all of whom were found dead, on April 13.

Fengxing was a licensed, privately-run mine.

Investigators said the flood water came from a neighboring state-owned colliery.

In another recent mining tragedy, five miners were killed and four remained trapped in a flooded colliery pit in central China's Henan Province.

The flooding in the city of Pingdingshan was reported Saturday afternoon, and rescue work continued on Monday.

2012-04-16

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-04/16/c_131529348.htm

Garage blast kills nine, injures dozens

BEIJING, Apr. 16 (Xinhuanet) -- A four-story residential building in the Xinluo district of Longyan, in East China's Fujian province, collapsed on Sunday after an explosion at a nearby auto repair facility, killing at least nine people and injuring 55, according to the Longyan information office.

It wasn't clear whether people were still trapped in the debris.

According to a preliminary investigation by police, the blast was caused by the illegal storage of explosive materials by a man surmaned Chen, said You Buzheng, spokesman of the Longyan Public Security Bureau.

Chen is under arrest and the investigation is continuing, You said.

"The rescuers are using life detectors and their hands, digging to find trapped people," You said.

A sudden downpour on Sunday evening forced the suspension of rescue work, an anonymous rescuer told China Daily.

At the scene, a China Daily reporter saw the blast had created a crater at least 3 meters deep and 10 meters wide. The hole was covered with a plastic sheet by local police.

More than 10 trucks parked inside the facility were overturned by the explosion, and broken glass shards were everywhere.

The collapsed building was still standing, though one side was destroyed.

Ambulances took the injured to hospitals all afternoon.

Guo Zhaolong, an official of the Xinluo district who arrived at the scene, told Xinhua News Agency that the explosion is still under investigation.

Local media reported the residential building belongs to the coal mine of Subang village in Yanshi town, while the auto repair facility is managed by the village head, who was eating with the staff inside.

Wang Chengqiong, a worker at the Subang coal mine, was slightly injured. From the Longyan hospital, he told taihainet.com, a website managed by the Fujian Daily, that he was sleeping on the third floor of the residential building at the time of the blast.

After hearing the explosion, he ran as fast as he could downstairs.

Zhang Zhaomin, mayor of Longyan, and Huang Xiaoyan, secretary of the Longyan Party committee, said a comprehensive building safety inspection campaign will be carried out in the city.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-04/16/c_131528458.htm