Briefs

Advertiser Staff

ARMY

Teams search for WWII remains

Search and recovery teams from the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawai'i, will be looking for the remains of missing World War II U.S. service personnel in Belgium, Albania and Germany.

The recovery mission in Belgium is for a missing pilot of a C-47A Skytrain from the 9th Troop Carrier Command that was shot down in the fall of 1944.

Following the Belgium mission, team members will head to Shepr, Albania, to look for the missing crew of a C-47A from the 28th Troop Carrier Squadron that crashed during the summer of 1944.

A 13-member team also is at Westeregeln, Germany, looking for the remains of nine crewmen who were aboard a B-24J Liberator bomber shot down in 1944.

From there, the team will head to Elsnig, Germany, to investigate the loss of a P-38J pilot whose plane went down in 1945.

The suspected crash site is in the former East Germany, limiting access until recently.

Army hopes to pull more into eArmyU

EArmyU, the U.S. Army's largest virtual university program, has provided educational opportunities to more than 30,500 soldiers since the project's inception in 2001. By 2005, the Army estimates 80,000 will be taking classes online.

Schofield Barracks is one of 14 Army installations worldwide taking part in the program, with more than 800 participants.

The U.S. Army in Hawai'i said that it feels it could do better, and Miles Sakaguchi, assistant director of the education center at Schofield, said a few bugs remain to be worked out. Fewer counselors than in years past have made it more of a challenge to inform the Army community about the program.

"We're trying," Sakaguchi said. "We haven't done a great job of getting the word out. There are fewer counselors now, so the units need to be a little more proactive about getting this information."

The number of colleges and universities participating is increasing from 21 to 32, and more than 3,000 courses and 150 academic programs will be offered.

NAVY

Aircraft practices tracking new subs

Combat Air Crew Six of Patrol Squadron 47 recently returned from a three-week detachment to Chile, where the P-3C Orion aircraft tracked two of the South American country's premier diesel submarines as part of an exercise.

Some countries are buying the new design of diesel submarines that are very quiet and hard to detect, providing a new challenge for sub hunters such as the P-3C.

Exercise Teamwork South also involved the French and British navies.

During the last phase of the exercise, Combat Air Crew Six was assigned to search for and track a notoriously quiet Chilean submarine in a one-on-one challenge.

The P-3C successfully detected the submarine, and in a tip of the hat, the Chilean submarine commander gave the crew a periscope photo of the Orion as it flew over the sub.