Is it possible that "Antiques Roadshow" could solve one of WWII's remaining mysteries? The show hasn't just done it, it's done it more than once.
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00:00You already know war is hell, and besides those killed in action, there's way too many
00:05lingering mysteries, especially with all those POWs or MIAs. Then there's the strange case
00:10of Private Andrew Loughner. Loughner stands out from his peers because he didn't go missing
00:15and then die. He died and then went missing. You see, he died during the Battle of Bunagona
00:21in New Guinea on November 30, 1942, and was buried north of New Guinea's village of Saputa.
00:27Then folks couldn't locate his grave. It took until 2016 for a set of remains at the
00:32Manila American Cemetery and Memorial to be identified as Loughner's. That's Manila, as
00:37in the Philippines, 2,000 miles from where he was initially buried. The remains landed
00:42in New Orleans on April 1, 2022, and were buried at his family plot at Wolf River Cemetery
00:47in Mississippi with full military honors.
00:50So this is a bit of a double mystery. Who, if anyone, got buried in New Guinea? And if
00:55Loughner was there in the first place, how did Loughner's remains get dug up, shipped
00:59all the way to the Philippines, and be interred there with no record of getting there in the
01:03first place? One mystery solved, another one begins.
01:072016 is pretty recent to figure out a World War II mystery, but that's not even the latest
01:12one. That would be the discovery of the HMS Trooper. A British submarine due to arrive
01:17at Beirut, Lebanon, on October 17, 1943, the Trooper didn't show up as scheduled. While
01:22no big, historically notable battles were happening at the time, Britain did set out
01:26to reclaim the Dodecanese Islands from the Axis powers in September of that year, one
01:30month before the Trooper vanished.
01:33The Dodecanese Islands are located in the Aegean Sea east of mainland Greece, a point
01:37integral to the Trooper's fate. On October 17, 2024, 81 years to the day after the Trooper
01:43was supposed to arrive at its destination, a Greek diver discovered the Trooper by sonar
01:48near the island of Donusa in the Dodecanese. He used remote-controlled vehicles to investigate
01:53further and found the sub resting 830 feet below the surface. As you can guess, it looks
01:58like the Trooper suffered a violent fate.
02:01The vessel was shattered into three pieces, implying that it struck one of the 287 mines
02:06that Germany laid in the region during World War II. All 64 men on board died.
02:12You know what a B-17 is, and thanks to the band, you know what a B-52 is. But there were
02:17a bunch of Bs — B-24, B-25, B-26, etc. You get it. The B, of course, stands for bomber.
02:24One of those B-24Ds comes equipped with a tale of heroism unknown until its recovery
02:30— the Lady B. Goode. In case you're wondering, the D stands for modified. It's not pertinent
02:35to the story, but now you know.
02:37The Lady B. Goode took off on April 4, 1943, for Saluk, from an airstrip near Benghazi,
02:43It was part of a squadron en route to Naples, Italy, and the Lady B. Goode was one of the
02:47last to leave. It headed along the same fateful path as the other B-24Ds over the Libyan Desert,
02:53which is part of the vast Sahara Desert. They had problems from the beginning, and never
02:57even made it to Naples, and ended up returning to their base after getting practically all
03:02the way to Italy. That meant they were flying back over the Mediterranean in the dark. How
03:07dark?
03:08Ah, I don't make the rules, that's history.
03:12The Lady B. Goode overshot the Saluk airstrip by a lot, ran out of fuel, and crash-landed
03:17in the desert. And by the looks of things, it was more of a landed than a crashed. It
03:22appeared that everyone either survived the impact or bailed out by a parachute. Several
03:26set out across the sands. Five made it 78 miles on foot, and one 109 miles. The problem
03:33is that 109 miles from the middle of a desert is still the middle of a desert.
03:37None of the soldiers were rescued alive. This story took form over 15 years after the
03:42crash in 1958, when the wreck of Lady B. Goode was spotted 400 miles south of Saluk. Ultimately,
03:48the automatic direction finder failed on the plane, and that doomed the crew.
03:53In 2018, Antiques Roadshow turned full unsolved mysteries by roping its viewership into unraveling
03:58the story behind a briefcase of possessions. Judging by a telegram dated November 9, 1941,
04:04the briefcase belonged to World War II prisoner of war Hubert Henderson, a pilot with the
04:08British Royal Air Force. The briefcase's caretaker, Suzanne, appeared on the show representing
04:13her uncle, an antiques dealer who'd acquired the briefcase 10 years prior at auction for
04:17£25. The briefcase was essentially a collection of mementos related to the deceased Henderson,
04:23and Suzanne wanted to track down whomever it rightfully belonged to.
04:27Antiques Roadshow teamed up with historian Tony Hoskins and revealed their findings in
04:312019. They discovered that a picture in the briefcase wasn't of Henderson, but of his
04:36friend Alistair Sandy Gunn. Then, things took a turn for the heartwarming.
04:41You're the nephew of the owner of this suitcase, John Henderson.
04:44I am.
04:45Eventually, the team found Henderson's nephew, John, who was happy to receive the briefcase
04:49and had apparently known about his uncle's and Sandy's friendship. He even named his
04:54son Alistair after Gunn.
04:56This one's not technically not completely solved, but closer to a resolution. Specifically,
05:02we're talking about the disappearance of musician-turned-serviceman Glenn Miller of Glenn Miller's orchestra
05:06fame. As misfortune would have it, Miller disappeared en route from Bedfordshire, England,
05:11to Versailles, France to play for U.S. troops stationed there. Neither he, his aircraft,
05:16his crew, or any other trace has ever been found, suggesting his flight crashed in the
05:20English Channel. Some theories propose that his plane was accidentally bombed by the British
05:25Royal Air Force, but evidence suggests that that wasn't the case, which brings Miller's
05:29case one step closer to solving.
05:32Miller's family recruited historian Dennis Sprague to investigate his death. Sprague's
05:36findings at the end of a six-year-long investigation include a diary from 17-year-old Richard Anderton
05:41in Reading, England. Dating to 1944, the diary included an entry in which Miller's plane
05:46was said to have been seen pass overhead. If the aircraft was in this area, then it
05:51couldn't have been bombed by the RAF, which supports the U.S. Army's previous investigation
05:55into Miller's disappearance. Sprague believes that the carburetor in Miller's plane froze
06:00mid-flight and the plane vanished beneath the waves of the English Channel.