Crashed WWII plane found after 60 years

With more than 6 decades between them and World War II, old war stories still never get old for the VMB 423 Seahorse Marines. They've been recounting them to each other for 22 years. Every year they gather together for a reunion.

"You go 12 months without seeing them, and you're ready to see them again," Seahorse Marine Ralph Gardner says.

At this year's gathering, as they recount memories of the war, there's one story at the top of all of their minds.

"April 22, 1944, we had a aircraft that crashed into a mountain," Seahorse Marine Ned Wernick says.

The VMB 423 Seahorse Marines were called PBJs or patrol bombers. Some of the men flew B-25 bombing missions on various Japanese island holdouts before Marine landings.

"I was there the night that it took off," Gardner says.

Just 20 years old at the time, Gardner was a mechanic who worked on the B-25 Mitchell.

"It took off. It was quite a one of those South Pacific storms developed," he says. "You don't know what a storm is until you go through one of those."

"It took off, and it never did come back. It turned out to be a long night there," Gardner says.

Gardner knew three men on board the aircraft. There were seven men in all.

For more than 60 years, the U.S. government declared the plane and its crew "lost at sea."

But a few years ago, Gardner and some of the men took on the task of locating the aircraft and relatives of the crew members.

"The families knew very little about what happened to their family members," Gardner says."The mother of the pilot, she went to her grave never knowing what happened to her son."

For two years, Gardner, his family, and many of the other WWII veterans searched various resources, including online, in search of relatives of the lost Seahorse Marines.

"One day we got a telephone call," Gardner says. "We got a hit from one of the relatives, the next day we got a hit from a second one, third day we got the third one, and we were quite elated."

One of the relatives they located was the niece of one of the men.

"She started crying and she said, 'Thank God I'm going to learn something about my uncle,'" Gardner says.

After finding the relatives, the search for the lost aircraft quickly became part of the mission as well.

Searching for the plane meant obtaining the plane's records, including the flight log of the last known radio transmission.

"With modern technology of Google Earth, they put the pieces together and found the plane," Kevin Grimac says.

Today, the island where the plane crashed is remote. In addition to Google Earth, a native tribe helped lead them to the exact spot where the wreckage sat.

"It's literally a hike through the jungle to the mountain top to find this plane," Grimac says. "It's astounding. It's been missing over 60 years."

A nephew of one of the crew members who died in the crash has written a documentary about the Seahorse Marines. They're hoping to see it air on the Discovery and History channels, as well as PBS.