More than 50 years after a Navy pilot crashed his plane on a northwestern Pennsylvania farm, officials made one of their final efforts to recover any wreckage or remains left behind.

Richard Baumgartner, 22, was flying an F4-U Corsair fighter-bomber from Atlantic City, N.J., to Battle Creek, Mich., in November 1950 when the plane crashed during a snowstorm in Hayfield Township, Crawford County.

A Navy crash team tried to recover what it could from the crash site, but bad weather hampered the effort, said Rick Kiser, whose family owns the land on which the plane crashed.

Kiser's family told him that a plane crashed on the family farm, but he forgot the crash location -- until he started to dig a watering hole for his cows in July and uncovered pieces of the wreckage.

Dennis Dirkmaat, a forensic anthropologist at Mercyhurst College in Erie County, and his students searched the crash site in August and found personal items, like a part of a wristwatch, and pieces of the plane.

In February, officials returned some of the pilot's remains to his surviving family.

The Navy wanted to ensure that all pieces of the wreckage were recovered, so workers from the World War II Airmen Preservation Society of Meadville returned to the site Monday and Tuesday.

"We hope they will recover more of the wreckage, maybe the engine, which is what they are looking for," Kiser said.