Clearance needed to
search crash site

Answer: Staff Sgt. Erika Ruthman, spokeswoman for Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickam Air Force Base, said the military is still waiting for "full clearance" to excavate the site at the 2,600-foot level of a ravine in the Koolaus, near the southern entrance to the H-3 tunnel. However, she doubts that the clearance to excavate the site will come before the rainy season. "A target date of next summer is tentatively proposed, pending approval," she said.

The recovery mission will be conducted by members of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. They will have to remove heavy vegetation and excavate and screen a large area. Remains would be taken to a laboratory for identification.

Warnke, then 23, took off from what was Barbers Point Naval Air Station on June 15, 1944, in a single-seat F-6F Hellcat fighter. He and seven other pilots were practicing dive-bombing angles on a truck at Kapaho Point, four miles south of Kaneohe Naval Air Station, now called Marine Corps Base Hawaii. None of the planes was armed.

After four simulated bombing runs, Warnke failed to rendezvous with his flight leader. The wreckage of the World War II fighter is believed to be on state conservation land owned by the state departments of Transportation and Hawaiian Home Lands.