Akutan Zero - Recovery

Recovery

The crash site, which was out of sight of standard flight lanes and not visible by ship, remained undetected and undisturbed for over a month. On July 10, an American PBY Catalina piloted by Lieutenant William "Bill" Thies spotted the wreckage. Thies's Catalina had been patrolling by dead reckoning and had gotten lost. On spotting the Shumagin Islands, he reoriented his plane and began to return to Dutch Harbor by the most direct course—over Akutan Island. The plane's captain, Albert Knack, spotted Koga's wreck. Thies's plane circled the crash site, noted its position on the map, and returned to Dutch Harbor to report it. Thies convinced his commanding officer, Paul Foley, to let him return with a salvage team. The next day, the team flew out to inspect the wreck. Navy photographer's mate Arthur W. Bauman took pictures as they worked.

Thies's team extracted Koga's body from the plane by having Knack (the smallest crew member) crawl up inside the plane and cut his safety harness. They searched it for anything with intelligence value, and buried Koga in a shallow grave. Thies returned with his team to Dutch Harbor, where he reported the plane as salvageable. The next day (July 12) a salvage team under Lieutenant Robert Kirmse was dispatched to Akutan. This team gave Koga a Christian burial in a nearby knoll and set about recovering the plane, but the lack of heavy equipment (which they had been unable to unload after the delivery ship lost two anchors) stymied their efforts. On July 15, a third recovery team was dispatched. This time, with proper heavy equipment, the team was able to free the Zero from the mud and haul it to a nearby barge, without further damaging it. The Zero was taken to Dutch Harbor, turned right-side up, and cleaned.

The Akutan Zero was loaded into the USS St. Mihiel and transported to Seattle, arriving on August 1. From there, it was transported by barge to Naval Air Station North Island near San Diego where repairs were carefully carried out. These repairs "consisted mostly of straightening the vertical stabilizer, rudder, wing tips, flaps, and canopy. The sheared off landing struts needed more extensive work. The three-blade Sumitomo propeller was dressed and re-used." The Zero's red Hinomaru roundel was repainted with the American blue circle-white star insignia. The whole time, the plane was kept under 24-hour military police guard in order to deter would-be souvenir hunters from damaging the plane. The Zero was fit to fly again on September 20.