New Guinea

Map shows location of Finisterre Mountains where George Gaffney's plane was found. Click on this or any image to see a larger version. "Finisterre," if one thinks about it, means "End of the Earth," and never before or since has an American armed force fought in a place more remote or inhospitable.

My ‘journey of the heart’ began abruptly in September, 1993 upon hearing WW II aircraft wreck researcher Janice Olson on a morning talk show as she described the recent discovery of a B25 in Papua New Guinea. I thought, "was that the crackle of static penetrating the long dark silence? Is it meant for me?" I contacted Olson, who tenderly answered my first question, "Could my father still be alive?". I began a search for information and anyone who had known my father, found the 41^st Fighter Squadron and was given his place of honor. I called the Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii to ask if they’d ever found anything regarding my father’s plane wreck. They regretted to say they had not.

Eighteen months later, Olson and I went to Papua New Guinea together. Next to the airstrip to which my father never returned, I buried a box filled with symbols of love in the tall kunai grass he had described in the last letter he wrote to my mother the night before he disappeared. Richard Leahy and I soared in his Cessna185 among the jagged peaks and deep valleys of primordial triple-canopy jungle in the Finesterres where I’d been before in the dreams of my childhood. Finally, I understood how a man could disappear from the face of the earth. I swept the landscape with my eyes and cried out from my heart, "Daddy, where are you?".

In November, 1996, Australian wreck researcher Bruce Hoy contacted me saying he knew the location of my father’s wreck. I gave this startling information to Olson who told Philadelphia businessman Alfred Hagen. He had just returned from the second of four trips to Papua New Guinea to search for the B25 wreck of his great-uncle Maj. Bill Benn. I sent him copies of my father’s declassified military records which included the numbers stamped on the engine and eight .50 caliber guns - just in case.

November 1997 proved to be a turning point in my life. Hagen arranged for Hoy to join him in PNG to search for my father’s wreck. The site yielded a B25 and the remains of nine men. Fortuitously, their helicopter set down in the highland mountain village of the Sawan people. Leahy interpreted as a native described two wrecks "four days walk in that direction".

Meanwhile, here at home I found the American WW II Orphans Network created by Ann Bennett Mix. AWON’s mission is to provide emotional support in a long-delayed healing process for those of us who have lived with bewildering, unresolved grief; assistance in the search for records and to preserve the history and honor of our fathers whose lives were sacrificed. Each of us is taking a ‘journey of the heart’ to make an emotional connection with our father for the first time. My commitment includes serving on the Board.

Hagen returned to PNG in June1998 and with Leahy’s help, determined one of those two wrecks to be a P47 with the presence of remains. We had reason to hope, it was "at the right address". CILHI investigated the site in October and by identifying four of the guns on the plane my father flew on that fateful day, was able to say, "PNG 100 is Gaffney". This "majestic coincidence", this miraculous discovery, has brought a sense of peace to my mother Ruth; my father’s three sisters and me that we had never dreamed possible although our joy is tempered by sadness in knowing that his parents died still grieving for their only son.