1945 New Guinea Gremlin Special rescue

The recovery of the three survivors from an isolated valley surrounded by mountains, enemy troops, and native inhabitants made worldwide news at the time and is the subject of the 2011 book Lost in Shangri-La by author Mitchell Zuckoff.

[2] On Sunday, May 13, 1945, Col. Peter J. Prossen, maintenance chief of the USAAF’s Far East Air Service Command in Hollandia, arranged a sightseeing flight southward over the New Guinea interior for a group of personnel.

Five passengers survived the initial wreck with two, Sergeant Laura Besley and Private Eleanor Hanna, succumbing to injuries the next day.

Although the press believed the survivors of the Gremlin Special crash to be the first outsiders to encounter the Yali and Dani who inhabited the area, Archbold had sent two exploration teams into the valley in 1938.

On May 26, two paratrooper medics from the U.S. Army’s 1st Filipino Regiment parachuted near the crash site to care for the survivors before leading them on a 10-mile trek down the mountain.