B-24 42-40475 crash site

Ombri with Frank's Dog Tag

US Army CILHI Team meeting with PNG Museum director, Soroi Eoe

MIA B-24 Crew
On December 3, 1943, B-24D "The Swan" 42-40475 went MIA on an armed reconnaissance mission. Fifty-nine years later, a wreck tecs and John Douglas discovered and visited this wreck. The sad story of its missing crew came to light, being the MIA of the 11 crew members aboard. One of them, was a gunner, named Robert E. Frank.

Robert E. Frank
32303093
T42 43 A

S/Sgt Robert E Frank 32303093
In 2003, Frank's dog tag was discovered by a local man, Trophy Ombri while hunting in the area. He came across the wreck site, and located the dog tag. As a former PNG soldier himself, he knew the importance of this dog tag, and brought it to the PNG Museum.

By coincidence, he met Justin Taylan, of Pacific Wreck Database and the PNG Museum curator, Mark Katakumb were at the museum that morning. Taylan recognized the tag as one of the crew members from the MIA B-24 John Douglas had discovered the year before.

A US Army CILHI team had just arrived in Papua New Guinea the day before, and were investigating another B-24 crash in Morobe Province, also from that same 5th Air Force, 43rd Bomb Group unit. Tropy expressed his intent to turn the tag over to CILHI personnel when they return to Port Moresby after their current mission, and will consider this wreck for future MIA work.