Finding Ensign DeMoss in the muck and mire

A nine-person military team has been digging up mud four days a week in the Koolau range in search of a missing World War II pilot whose fighter crashed in cloud cover during a night training flight.

Navy Reserve Ensign Harold P. DeMoss was circling the island with two other F6F Hellcats on June 23, 1945, when his plane became separated from the others near Kahuku Point.

A team from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has been methodically uncovering what is left of the crash site in the hope of recovering De­Moss 71 years after he was lost.

Photos from the site recently shared with his family in Tennessee reveal a section of the wing and fuselage, as well as panels with yellow and black paint and what looks like a partial number.

“Seeing those photos was so overwhelming that I cried like a baby,” said DeMoss’ niece, Judy Ivey. “To see this actually taking place is not anything I ever really expected. When I showed the photos to my dad, he said if he was in better health he would be sitting on that mountain right beside the workers until they were finished.”

DeMoss’ only sibling, younger brother James, now is 82.

“We have recovered evidence from the site, but until it has gone through analysis in our laboratory, we are not prepared to make any determinations,” DPAA said. The Pentagon agency, with the bulk of its operation based in Hawaii, searches for, recovers and identifies missing war dead.

The Army is providing Black Hawk helicopters to drop off team members who have to descend a cable 100 to 200 feet to reach the remote site. DPAA said it rains every day and the spot by a stream was choked with strawberry guava and ferns.

The recovery started in early August and is expected to conclude by the end of the month. Dug-up dirt is placed on a tarp and carried out by helicopter to be sifted and examined at Wheeler Army Airfield by 15 other team members.

With the helicopter pickup spot about 120 feet from the excavation site, and to minimize walking on a slippery trail, the on-site team set up a system of pulleys and buckets to move the dug-up soil. DPAA members are dropped off at the site on Monday, sleep in hammocks and tents, and are picked up by helicopter on Thursday.

About $550,000 was budgeted by DPAA early on for the recovery, not including the cost of helicopter support and environmental restoration.

DeMoss was just 21 years old when he took off from Naval Air Station Barbers Point at 1:05 a.m. with two other planes. The fighters ran into clouds at 3,000 to 6,000 feet. At 10 a.m., a crashed and burning plane was spotted.

Three days later, a search party found the still-smoking plane in rugged terrain and buried the remains of a person who could not be identified.

Clarence and Mary De­Moss made inquiries to the Navy about recovering their son. The years stretched into decades, and the hope to see Harold DeMoss returned for burial in the family graveyard passed from his parents to his brother, James, to his niece.

The Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery said in a 1948 letter to the family that “an attempt to recover the remains was considered impracticable” because the site was 7 miles from a traveled highway in the mountains and could be reached only “on foot over rocky ledges, through heavy undergrowth, and over extremely rugged and dangerous ground.”

In 1967, the Navy rejected the family’s request for government transportation to Hawaii to visit the grave. It also said that “due to the remoteness of the location where your son’s aircraft crashed, it is almost impossible to reach this area by normal means of transportation.”

Ivey contacted Ted Darcy and the WFI Research Group seeking help. Darcy, in turn, got in touch with the Hawaii Aviation Preservation Society, which located the crash site in late 2011. DPAA said the oldest document in its files related to DeMoss is from 2011 — when the aviation society contacted it.

The WFI Research Group, at wfirg.com, compiles and preserves World War II records. Darcy said 17 World War II military aviators remain missing on land in Hawaii — four Marines, six Army Air Force and seven Navy.