Directed by Jennifer Powers and Daniel T. O'Brien, Last Flight Home tells the story of the BentProp Project, comprised of a remarkable team of volunteers who actively seek to identify and recover the remains of American MIAs from World War II. Led by Dr. Patrick Scannon, an executive at a biotech firm in San Francisco, BentProp focuses on trying to find the wreckage from some 200 U.S. fighter aircraft downed over the islands of Palau in the far western Pacific Ocean, the site of intense battles between America and Japan. While Palau has largely been ignored as part of the Pacific theater of operations (Iwo Jima and Okinawa are certainly more remembered), BentProp's efforts are much appreciated by Americans whose loved ones simply vanished in the region. Last Flight Home accompanies Scannon, volunteers, and occasionally descendants of the missing, as they make their way through thick jungles, searching for remnants of crashed planes and trying to link their discoveries with the information in a database of MIA pilots and crewmembers. On occasion, such as an interview with an elderly Japanese veteran who says he beheaded an American soldier on one of the islands, Scannon receives grim but definitive evidence with which he can close a case. A powerful documentary on a subject that still resonates deeply some 60-plus years after the fact, Last Flight Home is highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)
Last Flight Home
(2008) 67 min. DVD: $19.95. Inecom (avail. from most distributors). PPR. ISBN: 1-59218-058-2. Volume 24, Issue 1
Last Flight Home
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