National Geographic - NOVA: Last Flight of Bomber 31

On March 25, 1944, a U.S. Navy bomber disappeared into the fog over the Bering Sea heading for a Japanese target. Fifty-five years later it has suddenly reemerged with a remarkable tale. NOVA travels to the plane's final resting place to unravel the mystery. Using clues found at the crash site and the latest forensic techniques, a U.S. government team gets to the bottom of this half-century-old disappearance. Taking off from Attu in the Aleutian Islands at the height of World War II, Bomber 31 was on its way to attack a Japanese outpost guarding the northern approach to Japan's main islands. The mission was part of a largely forgotten campaign in the Pacific war—a bold diversion to convince the Japanese that American forces were preparing to invade from the north, forcing the imperial command to deploy valuable resources to defend that front. At the same time, Allied forces under General Douglas MacArthur were making the main push from the south. Of the five planes in Bomber 31's squadron, one crashed on take-off, and three completed the mission. Bomber 31 and its seven-man crew went missing for more than half a century. Then in 1999 the U.S. embassy in Moscow received a surprising package: half a dozen photographs taken by a Russian historian, showing the wreckage of a World War II-era American bomber discovered on the slope of a volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Siberia. How the plane got there and what happened to its crew are mysteries that only deepened as NOVA arrived with investigators from the United States to explore the remains—the first recovery team of its kind allowed in Russia.