I talked with Pat Macha last night before and after his slide show illustrated talk. he says the evidence is that the plane almost made it back home safely but just barely failed to clear a ridge during the bad storm they had gotten caught in.

He has been finding and documenting aircraft wrecks for years. The amazing thing about aerial losses that most people don't realize, he says, is that more U. S. airmen (and women) were lost transporting, testing, and training in aircraft during WWII than were lost in combat. Some 35,000 died in those operations and plane wrecks, some never found, dot the landscape.