After an American Bomber Crashed Into an English Moor During World War II, a Corporal Was Declared Missing in Action. Archaeologists Have Now Revived the Search for His Remains

Corporal Clarence Watson was among 10 American airmen aboard a B-24H Liberator when it crashed under foggy conditions. The crew was training for Operation Carpetbagger, a top-secret effort to fly deep into Nazi-occupied Europe

Christian Thorsberg | Daily Correspondent

October 13, 2026 1:58 p.m.

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On a foggy October day in 1944, a small crew of American airmen stationed in England began preparations for a test flight of a B-24H Liberator nicknamed “Sack Time!”

As the plane was readied for its cross-country training exercise, Corporal Clarence Watson, a 21-year-old from California who worked on the plane’s ground crew, finally got his chance to sit in on a flight.

The crew he joined was part of the top-secret Operation Carpetbagger. Launched in 1943 by the Office of Strategic Services, Operation Carpetbagger consisted of high-risk clandestine missions to supply partisan fighters deep in Nazi-occupied Europe. Usually flying at night or in inclement weather, the crews piloted black planes at abnormally low altitudes to airdrop supplies and parachutists to aid resistance fighters. Most of these flights departed from England and sent deliveries to France in advance of the D-Day invasion.

But even test runs for Operation Carpetbagger were dangerous. Visibility was exceptionally poor over West Yorkshire when “Sack Time!” crashed into an obscured hill in England’s Peak District. Seven crew members died on impact. An eighth died later that night. The crash’s sole survivor, Staff Sergeant Curtis Anderson, used hunks of wet peat to extinguish the fire enveloping him, according to the Yorkshire Post’s Ruby Kitchen.

One mystery lingered from that tragedy: Watson’s body was never found, and he has officially remained missing in action ever since.

Now, 82 years later, the search for Watson’s remains has been revived. Geoscope, a U.K.-based forensic archaeology firm, in partnership with the U.S. government, is reopening the search in hopes of bringing closure to Watson’s family.

“We are here to try and find evid­ence to really con­firm that Clar­ence was actu­ally killed here,” Tim Fletcher, the lead archaeologist, tells the Yorkshire Post. “We are essen­tially fol­low­ing bread­crumbs.”

While the other servicemen’s bodies were recovered in the immediate aftermath of the crash at Twizle Head Moss, a moor near the town of Holmfirth, the military concluded that Watson’s remains were unrecoverable.

Recently, however, members of Wilson’s family learned that the military may have found some evidence at the crash site during initial recovery efforts: a piece of a parachute, the back of a watch and a hip bone that may have belonged to Wilson.

“They somehow fell off the face of the earth and were lost,” Vicky Weatherby, Wilson’s niece, tells the Yorkshire Post. She explains that, without confirmation of Wilson’s demise, her family continued to hold out hope. “Maybe they would have come to terms with his death and not always waited for a letter, or the door to open with Uncle Clarence walking in,” she adds.

In 2023, a cursory survey of the crash site and surrounding areas identified several nearby locations where more evidence related to Watson was likely to be found.

Archaeological research teams are now excavating those sites, hoping that the moor’s unique ecology may have preserved evidence of Wilson’s body. “The wet, acidic properties of peat act as a natural preservative, meaning it is possible that objects from the aircraft may have been preserved within the peat,” per a statement.

Weatherby recently visited the excavation site. “She and her wider family are still so invested in trying to find out what happened to Clarence. It was a very moving experience,” Fletcher tells the BBC’s Tom Ingall.

So far, the excavations have unearthed some material of interest, but archaeologists are sending their finds back to labs in the United States before making any pronouncements.

“This has been a complex project, involving international partnership and co-operation over nearly a decade,” Natalie Ward, an archaeologist for Peak District National Park, says in the statement. “It demonstrates the significance and continued relevance of our aircraft crash sites, not just as archaeological sites but as emotive places in our landscape.”

Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue, Sierra magazine, Discover magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal.