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7. A B-24 bomber was found 74 years after being shot down in the Pacific War
Heaven Can Wait was the name the crew of a B-24D heavy bomber gave their aircraft, which in 1944 was involved in the heavy fighting in New Guinea. On March 11, 1944 the aircraft was part of a mission to bomb Japanese anti-aircraft batteries on the northern coast of New Guinea in the area of Hansa Bay. The B-24 carried a crew of eleven, and the crew of Heaven Can Wait had been in the area for just four months prior to their mission of March 11. After hitting targets of opportunity after finding their assigned target obscured by clouds, Heaven Can Wait was on its return leg when it encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire. The airplane began to break apart in the air, losing its tail section, before crashing into the sea, where it burned on the surface before sinking beneath.
The crew of the lost bomber were declared killed in action on the same day, based on the eyewitness accounts of other fliers who observed the crash. In October, 2017, after an eleven day search and considering the accounts of eyewitnesses who reported the loss of the airplane in 1944, the wreckage of a B-24 was found at a depth of just over 210 feet, in the area reported as the crash site. The wreckage was surveyed by a remotely operated vehicle, and the result of the survey and supporting data led to the conclusion that the wreck was the remains of Heaven Can Wait, more than seventy years after the bomber and the eleven men in it plunged to the bottom of the sea.