Alfred "Fred" Hagen made 4 trips to New Guinea in search of his great uncle's (Major Bill Benn, the 43rd's CO) B-25 crash site. Fred finally found the site in July of 1998. In addition he found crash sites of several other American crew members. A video of the various trips has been made and is available for $14.95 (which includes shipping and handling).  Send check for videos to:

Fred Hagen
5029 Knorr St. 
Philadelphia, Pa  19135

On a sweaty afternoon in October, on a hillside in New Guinea, Philadelphia businessman Fred Hagen encountered the face of a death while searching for a piece of his own history.

In the aftermath, he found out a little about himself.

But on that day, about 2:30 under clear skies that could not be seen from under the jungle's canopy, the sometime-adventurer walked into a clearing and saw the wreckage of a P-47 Thunderbolt, a single-engine fighter from World War II.

And still with his plane was the pilot, resolutely waiting long past death for someone to find him.

``It was incredible,'' said Hagen, who lives on a farm in Bucks County and owns a construction company in Tacony. ``The plane was in surprisingly good condition, given that 53 years had elapsed and that it had crashed.

``The prop was sticking out of the ground. The engine was buried, and the cockpit area was heavily damaged, but the wings were in good condition and the tail was entirely intact.''

The pilot was a 22-year-old Army flight officer from Worcester, Mass., who had been declared missing in action and presumed dead.

Hagen, 39, knew that this particular wreckage was not what he had come to New Guinea's central highlands to find. He was in search of the World War II bomber of his great-uncle, Maj. William Benn, who was killed when his B-25 went down in 1943 in about the same area.

Hagen had been to this remote place in the clouds - 8,500 feet above sea level and filled with towering trees and almost-impenetrable undergrowth - in 1995 looking for Benn's plane, and he had come away empty-handed.

What he did not know, when he dropped from a helicopter into a jungle clearing a year later, was that he and his team of nine men had stumbled upon the long-lost relative of a New England family.

The remains could tell him nothing of the pilot's identity, Hagen said. But the plane's tail could. Visible on it was an identification number: 28059.

Hagen, a big man with sharp eyes and a firm handshake, knew that his role in the discovery was officially over. The Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii recovers the remains of Americans who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, and notifies their families.

``Any time someone finds something, they're the ones who go in,'' Hagen said. ``They are the only people who go out and recover remains and officially identify them. My responsibility was just to let them know what I'd found.''

But the wheels of recovery and notification can turn slowly.

``I'd heard that another downed pilot had been found several years before, and the family hadn't been notified for three years,'' Hagen said.

So he decided to try to learn the pilot's identity.

Hagen did his duty, reporting his find to the U.S. Embassy in the New Guinea capital city of Port Moresby and the Central ID lab in Hawaii. He also asked a friend in Australia to do some digging for him.

Within days, the mystery was solved, Hagen said.

According to records his friend unearthed, the P-47 Thunderbolt had been flown by Lt. Wilfrid ``Billy'' Desilets, who was lost on Aug. 18, 1943. The young officer was part of a squadron that had encountered bad weather after having escorted transport aircraft. Desilets' plane, and a companion's, crashed.

Once he learned the pilot's identity, Hagen wasn't sure what to do with it.

``It's not my job to contact families,'' he said. ``I have no experience in it. But I was confident in the accuracy of the information I had.

``And two members of my own family were lost in World War II, so I know the pain a family goes through when that kind of situation is not resolved.

``I did a lot of thinking about it and decided I had to do it.''

Back in Philadelphia, Hagen began a search of another kind. He and his secretary, Arlene Millar, began calling people in Massachusetts with the surname Desilets.

Millar wound up reaching the widow of a Desilets cousin, and she put Hagen in touch with Yvette Plante, one of Billy Desilets' six surviving sisters. Desilets had been the third-oldest, and the only boy, among eight children.

Hagen called Plante on Thanksgiving Day.

``The family initially found it very hard to believe,'' Hagen said. ``It didn't make sense that a Philadelphia businessman would fly all the way to New Guinea for no apparent reason and find their relative in the jungle.''

The news that Billy - the sisters always called him that - had been found had a profound impact on the family.

``When Yvette called to tell me, she kept hesitating,'' said Therese Auger, 71, of Portsmouth, N.H., the fifth of the eight children. ``She finally said that a man had called her who said he had some news about our brother.

``It has been real emotional for us, but we're so grateful he's finally been found. Nobody understands but us. He was our only brother. He was the best. The day after Pearl Harbor, he went to sign up, and for him not to come home is so sad.

``Now he'll finally come home.''

Desilets received his pilot's wings in February 1943. He got married in May. Two days later, he was sent overseas, Auger said.

He never returned.

Desilets' wife, Anne, stayed close to the family for about five years. She eventually remarried.

Auger's husband, Elvin, 71, said Hagen's call reminded him of Dec. 18, 1945 - the day the family was informed that Desilets was presumed dead.

``The telegram came . . .,'' he said. ``We knew it had to be bad news, but the Western Union office was closed, so we had to wait until the next day to pick it up. I drove down with her father . . . to pick it up, and when we got back, the whole family was lined up on the back porch.''

Ten years later, Elvin Auger, in the Air Force at the time, learned the circumstances surrounding Desilets' death from an officer who had been with him in New Guinea.

``There were 16 of them flying air cover,'' he said. ``They were in a box canyon. The weather turned bad, and they couldn't turn the formation. Two didn't come up.''

And 51 years after the telegram arrived, Hagen called.

``It was really just as bad this last time as it was the first,'' Elvin Auger said. ``But I can tell you Mr. Hagen was 100 percent right [in telling the family]. Some of the family is in poor health. A year from now would be too late.''

Since the call, he said, the family has been able to verify through the office of Sen. Robert C. Smith, (R., N.H.) that the remains Hagen found were Desilets'. The Augers have been told that the Army probably will not recover the remains until the spring.

* The wreckage of Maj. William Benn's downed B-25 bomber is still out there. Hagen has not given up on finding his great-uncle's downed craft, which was on a reconaissance mission when it crashed in enemy-held territory, Hagen said.

Benn, who commanded the 63d Squadron of the Fifth Air Force, is a unique Philadelphia link to World War II. The Army officer is credited with perfecting the tactic of low-altitude bombing. He grew up in Williamsport and Coudersport, Pa., and graduated from Temple University. He was featured in a Time magazine article on the air war in the Pacific. The issue's publication date - Jan. 18, 1943 - is the day Benn died. Before he died, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

Benn's remains were recovered in 1957, but the wreckage has since been swallowed by the rain forest. Hagen wants to uncover it.

``Once I went the first time and failed, to me it's just something I have to finish,'' he said.

He has an idea where the plane might be, but in the rugged New Guinea terrain, an office building could find a good hiding place.

``The area is just as wild and remote as it was 50 years ago,'' Hagen said. ``You could walk right by a plane in that jungle.''

Or stumble into one, and answer a family's prayers.