Impressed by the Ramstein air show disaster, Uwe Benkel founded the "Arbeitsgruppe für Vermisstenforschung", a non profit group of researchers for missing pilots and crew members in 1989. The focus of the work is in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. The members have located over 450 crash sites there. They were also active in all federal states and in the neighboring European area. The researchers are not interested in aerial warfare archeology. but the aim is to give missing planes of the belligerent nations their names and provide a decent burial site. In more than 25 years, his group dug out more than 140 missing planes, with the remains of 50 crew members recovered.