In December 1944, the B-24 Liberator bomber Tulsamerican—the last B-24 built for World War II in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and paid for by the Home Front factory workers—fell from the sky while returning from a mission over Europe and disappeared beneath the waves of the Adriatic Sea. Seven crewmembers survived the crash and were rescued. Three men were never found, thought to be lost forever, unrecoverable.

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A project funded by the US Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), in partnership with the Croatian Navy, and an elite team of underwater archeologists and technical divers to excavate the plane's wreckage was undertaken in the fall of 2017.