The Associated Press

LOUISVILLE - An eight-member team of American investigators is traveling to China to search for the remains of a Louisville pilot killed in a secret mission 50 years ago.

Two years ago, the U.S. military announced it had found wreckage at a site where a villager said he'd seen Norman A. Schwartz's C-47 plane go down from enemy fire.

The American team is returning this week to the site to look for the remains of Schwartz and another CIA pilot, officials said.

Schwartz's relatives say it may be their last chance to find his remains and bring them home.

"If there are remains to be found, they'll be found," said Erik Kirzinger, Schwartz's 52-year-old nephew who lives in Madison, N.C.

At the time of Schwartz's death, he was flying for Civil Air Transport, an organization that used surplus military aircraft in secret anti-communist missions in Asia.

He flew passenger and cargo missions by day and clandestine CIA missions by night, Kirzinger said. In November 1952, Schwartz was flying near the North Korean border in the region formerly known as Manchuria in an attempt to pick up a Chinese agent believed to be in peril.

The plan was for Schwartz to fly low to the ground. Another pilot and two CIA officers were aboard the plane, but Schwartz and the other pilot, Robert C. Snoddy of Eugene, Ore., were killed after the plane drew enemy fire and crash-landed.

It was apparently an ambush, Kirzinger said. The two CIA officers aboard, Richard Fecteau and Jack Downey, survived and were captured. The two agents were convicted of spying and spent two decades in Chinese prisons.

It wasn't until they were released that Washington acknowledged the U.S. had carried out spy missions in China.