Vanishing Point: The Search for a B-24 Bomber Crew Lost on the World War II Home Front

Journalist Wilber (Under the Surface) shines a light in this poignant history on the more than 15,000 U.S. Army Air Force pilots and crew members who died in stateside training missions during WWII. The focus is on one such accident, the disappearance of a B-24 bomber known as Getaway Gertie in Upstate New York in February 1944, and the ripple effects on the crew members’ families and the community of Oswego, N.Y., where “war buffs and amateur divers” continue to search for the wreckage in nearby Lake Ontario. (The official search was called off two weeks after the accident, with only a wing section recovered.) Wilber pieces together the life of pilot Keith Ponder through archival research and a visit to his relatives in Scott County, Miss., and vividly recreates the plane’s low-altitude flight over Oswego County after a “blinding snowstorm” left the crew “unable to communicate, unable to see, and running out of fuel after missing the airport on multiple passes.” Elsewhere, Wilber profiles locals who have spent decades scouring the bottom of the lake for the Gertie and other wrecks. Smoothly written and painstakingly researched, this is a fitting tribute to unsung heroes of the Greatest Generation. Photos. (May)