WATSONVILLE, Calif. -- Pipeline workers unearthed bone fragments and the wreckage of a Navy dive bomber that crashed in a field during a Central Coast training flight in 1944.

The workers were digging a pipeline trench for the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency on farmland last month when wreckage was discovered six feet down along Trafton Road near the Pajaro River levee east of Highway 1.

Archaeologists for the agency unearthed more plane parts and bone fragments and determined it was the wreckage of a Navy plane that crashed Jan. 14, 1944, Sgt. Mike Richards of the Monterey County Sheriff's Coroner Division said this week.

Old photos of the area show the crash site, now a mushroom farm, was once the location of an airfield and tower.

"The Navy probably did what they could to remove the bodies," Richards said.

A Navy accident report showed Ens. Delbert Crammer Goodspeed and Aviation Radioman 2nd Class Robert Henry Paulson died when the Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless dive bomber crashed during a training flight.

The military said the plane "was observed to leave formation at about 10,000 feet in a left gliding turn, present cause undetermined."

Goodspeed and Paulson were assigned to Navy bombing squadron VB-18, which had arrived at Watsonville Airport the previous October. The airport was leased by the Navy during World War II and was returned to the city after the war.