Sândala Barros
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Macapá - An archeological team from the Joaquim Caetano da Silva Museum made an expedition to register the discovery of remains of an American plane in the waters of the Guarupora River, in the municipality of Cutias do Araguari, 110 kilometers from Macapá, capital of the state of Amapá, in the northernmost part of Brazil.

According to information gathered by the archeologists, the plane crashed in the region around 60 years ago, during the Second World War. The team photographed the plane's propeller and one of its engines.

Due to heavy rains, the expedition will be suspended until the dry season, when the water level drops in the region. "From the oral report, we have already confirmed that it is really a plane from the Second World War, but we don't know exactly what model," said Edinaldo Pinheiro, manager of the Joaquim Caetano Museum's Department of Archeological Patrimony.

He revealed that a 78 year-old local resident presumably saw the plane crash. "A witness said that he saw when the plane crashed in the middle of the forest and burst into flames. The next day he went to the locale and verified that the crew was dead and that parts of the plane were scattered but that most of it was buried," Pinheiro affirmed.

According to specialists from the museum, during WWII the United States established bases throughout Latin America, one of them in the municipality of Amapá, 400 kilometers from the capital. The specialists say that planes and dirigibles used to take off from this base, which was secret, to hunt German submarines in the state's rivers.

In 1996 an American D-24 plane, together with the corpses of American Marines, was discovered in the municipality of Laranjal do Jari, in the southern part of the state. A few days later the US government sent a team to Brazil to remove all the remains.

Translation: David Silberstein