Pat Scannon, Project Recover co-founder, was named one of the Top 20 finalists nominated to receive this year’s Congressional Medal of Honor Society Citizen Honors Award.
Pat, the founder of the BentProp Project and co-founder of Project Recover, has been chosen for his nearly three decades of extraordinary volunteer service to find American MIAs and bring them home.
Pat Scannon, Project Recover co-founder, was named one of the Top 20 finalists nominated to receive this year’s Congressional Medal of Honor Society Citizen Honors Award.
Pat was nominated for nearly three decades of extraordinary volunteer service to find American MIAs and bring them home.
Service Act Awardees
On March 25, 2021, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society announced that Aidan Reilly and James Kanoff are the 2021 Citizen Honors Service Act Awardees.
Reilly and Kanof created FarmLink Project; an effort connecting farmers with a surplus product to communities in need during the pandemic.
“I am honored to have been nominated for the award and am grateful for the work James and Aiden have done to help our nation through this crisis,” Pat Scannon said.
Congressional Medal of Honor Society Citizen Honors Award
Every year there is a national search to select five United States citizens and one organization to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor Society Citizen Honors Award. The Award is given to ordinary Americans who become extraordinary through a single act of bravery or selfless service.
To be nominated, a citizen’s actions must epitomize ”‘service above self” and their actions extend “above and beyond” their professional and vocation area of responsibility.
After the finalists are selected, a second panel made up exclusively of Medal of Honor Recipients will select the finalists to receive the Citizens Honors Awards.
Pat Scannon: Top 20 Finalist
Pat Scannon was nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor Society Citizens Honors Award for nearly three decades of extraordinary volunteer service to bring our MIAs from past wars and conflicts home.
Pat founded the BentProp Project, now Project Recover, after a trip to Palau in 1993. He saw a 65-foot wing of an American B-24 bomber lying in shallow water along a coral island in Palau. For Pat, the wing represented a forgotten battle and brave men who had fought and died there.
He knew he had to find the rest of the plane and, with it, the stories and the young men lost there that day.
Keeping America’s Promise
Our Nation makes a promise to those who wear her cloth, that if they fall in service, every effort will be made to bring them home.
For nearly thirty years, Pat Scannon has been committed to keeping America’s promise to bring our MIAs home.
From its inception as a grassroots effort in Palau to now conducting missions around the world, Pat has been persistently leading the charge to find Americans killed or missing in action since World War II and help bring them home.
During that time, Project Recover has:
- Gone on 60+ missions in 20+ countries and territories
- Located 50 aircraft associated with 170+ American MIAs
- Helped repatriate 14 MIAs with another 80+ awaiting recovery missions
- Ongoing investigations involving 3,000+ MIAs related to 500+ aircraft
Every American’s Mission
More and more people have joined Pat in keeping America’s promise to bring our MIAs home.
Pat and the entire Project Recover team welcomes each person — sponsor, partner, donor, subscriber, or follower — to join the mission.
Americans working together to serve our MIAs with the same commitment and integrity they served us is an honor indeed.
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Pat Scannon absolutely deserves this honor, without question, even though he’d never, ever, admit that himself. His tireless efforts the past 30 years have renewed global interest in recovering MIA’s from 70+ years ago. It’s an incredibly honorable cause.
That 65 foot wing Pat discovered at the start of his honorable service to our MIA’s was from B-24 serno 44-40603 and happened to be my cousin’s plane. Without Pat’s discoveries my cousin’s crew would have remained mostly forgotten. He has inspired me to write the story of the Dixon crew, my cousin’s crew.
He certainly deserves this recognition and the honors and trappings that accompany it.
God bless you Pat from the Dixon crew families.
Congratulations to Pat for his steadfast dedication to our missing military heroes who died for us. Even though we may still have a missing family member, it gives us great comfort to see him succeed in his recovering other lost souls. And best regards to Pat’s team for their dedication and work for missing Americans.
Ben Weber
St. Louis
Greetings Again Dr. Scannon/Pat,
It has been a long time (April 2016) since our paths crossed in the airport in Palau. Marta, my wife, and I had finished some diving field research in Palau and were waiting (with you) for a flight to Guam. We knew then that any person intently writing in Rite-in-the-Rain field books was our kind of person. As I did then, I congratulate and thank you for the great work you are doing. The expansion of BentProp to Project Recover is terrific. I followed up our brief encounter with an offer an offer to volunteer to keep our “eyes open” underwater in any way for signs that would help your efforts. I did not hear from you back then, but we are now doing research in the south Pacific (Tonga and Fiji area) and the offer still stands.
Dr. Raymond Buckley
University of Washington
Hello Dr. Buckley, we will pass this on to Pat.
Blue Skies,
dan