Attempts to find the families have certainly been made.

Whilst understanding the reservations of the ‘commercial’ aspect of the recovery (I mentioned this in my BAW article) it is the only realistic way the recovery is ever likely to happen. The US Govt won’t get involved and the British MOD actively pursued a legal action to block the intended recovery. Since then, however, one of the principal players in trying to get this recovery to happen (a US Admiralty lawyer) has passed away and I suspect that any initiative to take things forward will have stalled because of that.