LSGI participates in Project Avenger to dig up Wreckage of US Warplane in WWII

Assisted by Ir Dr. Wallace Lai, Associate Head of LSGI, and his research team with latest surveying technologies, an international team of archaeologists and forensics experts, and over 250 volunteers identified an aircraft wreckage field located at some two-hour uphill climbing to the closest access point at Tai Tam Country Park. The wreckage is believed to be a US warplane ‘TBM Avenger’ crashed during WWII in the Operation Gratitude in 16 January 1945. Within the course of 12 days in November 2021, 80 years after the Japanese invasion, the team recorded 600 fragments in the crash site. Widely reported by few media, Dr. Lai’s team made use of CEDD’s air-borne LiDAR data to portrait the terrain model for identifying possible impact site in the wilderness of Tai Tam. Then during the field work, the team also recorded the coordinates with global navigation satellite system (GNSS) in accuracy of 2cm, re-constructed 3D models of the wreckage by close-range photogrammetry and laser scanners, and mapped the underground objects by ground penetrating radar and metal detector. A complete storyline can be found in here. The Project Avenger unfolds the untold and undiscovered HK wartime history in Tai Tam, and Dr. Lai’s team demonstrates how LSGI technologies can be used to enrich the content of wartime history and archaeology.