Recovering the Lost Aviators of World War II

By Stephen Mihm Photographs by Christopher Perez Just before dawn on September 10, 1944, the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise came to life, as ground crews readied a line of airplanes for battle. The day’s mission was critical: to hit Japanese positions and ships in advance of an amphibious invasion of Peleliu, an island in the archipelago of Palau some 50 miles to the west. At approximately…