PROJECT FIND 'MICKEY'

James Dibble is organizing this fundraiser.

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Watch: Project Find 'Mickey' Trailer

On September 9, 1943 the U.S. Army launched its invasion of Italy. The landings at Salerno were designed to remove Italy from WWII, secure the Mediterranean Sea and force Germany to divert troops from the Russian front.

Flying protective top cover that day was 1st Lt. James P. Dibble. It was his 49th mission. Lt. Dibble was leading a flight of 12 P-38 Lightning fighter planes to provide air superiority for the troops landing on the beaches.

Following their top-cover assignment, Lt. Dibble was ordered to find and attack a large German convoy of over 400 tanks and trucks moving up toward Salerno from Padula, Italy.

Finding the convoy, Lt. Dibble and his flight committed to a strafing attack. Lt. Dibble and his wingman, Lt. Stan Wojick’s planes were hit by anti-aircraft fire from the convoy. Lt. Wojick was able to bail out of his plane to be captured by the German troops. Lt. Dibble’s plane was seen to crash-land in a farm field southeast of Padula, Italy. Following the crash, Lt. Dibble escaped his plane as German troops were arriving. Lt. Dibble proceeded to engage in a firefight with the Germans and was killed. Two local farmers were then ordered to bury him next to his plane.

At this point Lt. Dibble was listed as missing in action and an unknown soldier after the Germans removed all forms of identification. Jim Dibble's remains were eventually identified by US Graves Registration, with information provided from an investigation of the crash-site by the U.S. Army in June 1944. His remains were returned to his family and buried in Middleville, MI at the Mt Hope cemetery in December 1948.

The family never learned the details of what happened to Jim. That’s the way things stood until 1986 when I started a project to try to find out as much as I could about my uncle. Ultimately, I found out everything about Jim’s life and missions he flew out of North Africa.

I located his crash-site and excavated the area to find many small pieces of Jim’s plane, 'Mickey'. Mickey was the nickname of Jim’s wife and her name had been proudly painted on the nose of each of Jim’s three planes.

During my investigation into my uncle, I also wanted to try to find the crash-site of his wingman, Lt. Stan Wojcik’s plane. I interviewed every 94th Fighter Squadron pilot that I could find who was on his last mission. Piecing together their stories I was able to get some idea of where Wojick’s crash-site might be.

I contacted Radiant Exploration, Inc. and asked if they could search the area by satellite with their nuclear magnetic resonance imaging technology looking for any large aluminum and iron deposit. They found a mass in the area where we thought Wojick’s plane went down, but they told us that they also found a large mass of aluminum and iron located about one half mile straight west of Dibble's crash-site in the Tanagro river.

When I was in Padula with my family excavating Jim’s crash-site, no one had any idea what had happened to the remains of 'Mickey'. Is it possible that when the time came to clean up the crash-site, that the farmers loaded up what was left of Jim’s airplane and deposited it in the Tanagro River?

I travelled to Padula with a pulse induction metal detector to validate the satellite data and in the middle of the river we got a massive hit about 6 feet deep.

We are now attempting to raise enough funds to further verify the finding of aluminum and excavate the Tanagro River site to determine if the remains of Jim’s P-38, 'Mickey' were truly deposited in the Tanagro river and have been waiting for 81 years to be discovered.

If we are successful in retrieving the aircraft remains, we intend to donate most of the wreckage to a museum in Salerno dedicated to the battle that took place there. Also, we hope to bring back some pieces to be able to be displayed at the public library in Jim’s home town, Hastings, Michigan.

Watch: WWII - Lost and Found: The Search for James P. Dibble