WWII pilot families lovingly resurrect lost lives

Feng Zhong from Wuxi, China, was overcome with emotion when he accepted a tiny piece of metal, freshly taken off the wreckage of a World War II US Army Air Force AT-6 Texan trainer plane.

Feng had traveled thousands of miles to Phoenix, Arizona, and found his way to the office of Aviation Archaeological Investigation and Research, where archeologist Craig Fuller presented him the souvenir.

The whole piece of wreckage, roughly 3-by-5-feet in size, came off the plane in which Feng's uncle Van Shao-Chang, a sub lieutenant of the Chinese Air Force, died in an accident in March 1945.

"I am very lucky to have this piece from the plane my uncle flew in," said Feng gratefully.

Van was learning to fly at Thunderbird Field in Glendale, Arizona, where pilots from 29 countries were trained during WWII.

"He was practicing long distance flight in the night and crashed on his return home," said Fuller, who specializes in researching WWII US Army Air Force accidents and has amassed an impressive collection of historical records.

When Fuller first got Van's accident report from the US government, it came with a grainy picture of the accident site, showing a uniquely shaped peak.

"I knew I was looking at a canyon that had a weird peak. So I hiked that area. When I found this very distinct peak, I knew I was in the correct canyon. As I hiked up there I found the wreckage of the airplane. It was in 1995, the plane crashed 50 years earlier, in 1945," Fuller said.

He kept a piece of the wreckage as a memento. "The pilot was from China. I wondered who he was, who his family was, if they knew where he had died.

"He died for his country, for China and the US against the invasion from Japan. It's incredible that I met someone who is related to him all these years later, and I got to see a picture of him. This completes the circle to learn about his family," Fuller said.