Latest news with #DPAA
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
World War II pilot from Georgetown finally accounted for
The Brief Georgetown pilot killed during World War II finally accounted for Charles W. McCook was killed in a plane crash in Burma McCook will be buried in Georgetown in August WASHINGTON - A Georgetown pilot killed during World War II has finally been accounted for, according to the U.S. government. What we know The U.S. Department of Defense's POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) says that 23-year-old Charles W. McCook, a first lieutenant in the Army Air Forces, was accounted for on April 18. McCook, who was from Georgetown, was killed during World War II. In summer 1943, he was a member of the 22nd Bombardment Squadron (Medium), 341st Bombardment Group (Medium), 10th Air Force. On Aug. 3, 1943, while he was the Armor-Gunner of a B-25C on a low-altitude bombing raid in Burma, his plane crashed. McCook was one of four killed; the two survivors were captured by Japanese forces. His remains were not recovered after the war, and he was declared missing in action. Dig deeper In 1947, four sets of remains, later designated X-282A-D, were recovered from a common grave near a Burmese village. Local witnesses said the remains came from an "American crash". The remains could not be identified at the time and thus were interred as "unknowns" in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii. In Jan. 2022, all four sets of remains were exhumed and taken to the DPAA for analysis. Scientists then used dental, anthropological and isotope analysis to identify his remains. The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System also used mitochondrial DNA analysis and genome sequencing data. What's next McCook will be buried in Georgetown in August. His name was recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines, along with others missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to show he has been accounted for. The Source Information in this report comes from the US Dept of Defense's POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Utah family prepares to bury WWII pilot who was MIA for 80 years
PARK CITY, Utah () — A Utah family is getting ready to lay to rest U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. George Frank Wilson on the 81st anniversary of his plane being shot down over France during WWII. Lt. Wilson, the pilot of a B-17G 'Flying Fortress' bomber, was killed when his plane crashed in northern France after being hit by anti-aircraft fire on July 8, 1944. For 80 years, he was considered missing in action. Now, his family has some closure. Brian Frank Wilson, who shares the same middle name as his grandfather, told that even though he never met his grandfather, he feels close to him, especially now that the family knows what happened and is preparing to bury him on the 81st anniversary of his death and disappearance. 'It's like the stars are aligning, you know, it's crazy,' Brian Wilson said. 'I feel his soul. I feel there is a purpose to all of it.' Like the tides of war, a turning point is bringing relief to 1st Lt. George F. Wilson's descendants. Santaquin Police Department remembers Sgt. Bill Hooser's legacy one year later 'When he fell out of formation, and everyone was bailing out, one of his closest friends, the engineer, lost his parachute,' Brian Wilson stated. 'I guess Frank (Lt. Wilson) was still alive and gave him his parachute, the last one, and told him to get out.' Brian Wilson told that this happened on July 8, 1944. His grandfather, a young 22-year-old pilot, saved his crew after taking enemy fire. 'They were certain he went down with the plane. It exploded. It was on fire, and that was the last of it,' he added. Then radio silence. In 1951, Wilson was declared non-recoverable. In 2018, the family would start to get some answers as to what happened to Lt. Wilson. 'Eric Bornemeier, who we owe a ton of gratitude towards, married my cousin years ago,' Brian Wilson stated. 'He's in the military. He thought this was a cool story, and he went out and spearheaded a search to find George in this field in northern France. Lo and behold, they found him.' At least, they hoped it was him. 'In July 2018, a member of Wilson's family provided DPAA with new information about a potential crash site for Wilson's aircraft,' explained the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. 'One of Wilson's family then traveled to Monchy-Cayeux and met three witnesses who remembered the crash.' The DPAA added: 'In 2019, a DPAA investigation team visited Monchy-Cayeux and discovered a concentration of wreckage consistent with a B-17 at the site, which they then recommended for excavation.' It would take a few more years for all the questions to be answered. 'From Aug. 6-30, 2021, DPAA partner Colorado State University excavated the site and accessioned all recovered evidence into the DPAA laboratory,' DPAA explained. 'They returned to the site for another excavation from July 25 to Aug. 13, 2022, finding additional evidence which was also accessioned into the DPAA laboratory.' Then, in 2024, the government reached out to Brian Wilson requesting a sample of his DNA. 'To identify Wilson's remains, scientists from DPAA used anthropological analysis, as well as material evidence,' DPAA stated. 'Additionally, scientists from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome DNA, and autosomal DNA analysis.' It was a match. 'They said there's a one in 84 billion chance it's not him,' added Brian Wilson. 'So pretty positive match it's him, they said.' Lt. Wilson was considered accounted for on Nov. 21, 2024. 'Wilson's name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Normandy American Cemetery, in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, along with others still missing from WWII,' stated DPAA. 'A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.' The family got a full government briefing about what happened to Lt. Wilson on May 15, 2025. At that time, Brian Wilson accepted medals, including a Purple Heart, on his grandfather's behalf. 'I just feel an immense amount of pride being his grandson,' he said. 'After seeing and receiving those medals and reading the whole accounting, I'm just totally blown away.' On July 8, 2025, George F. Wilson will finally be laid to rest in Bountiful next to family. 'To have this all come around 81 years to the day, there's something, there's a higher source that's in control,' Brian Wilson stated. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
World War II soldier from Gravette killed during D-Day invasion to be buried next month
NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — A World War II soldier from Gravette who was killed during the D-Day invasion in Normandy will be buried next month, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Monday. Sanders said during her remarks at the 2025 Memorial Day Observance at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock that U.S. Army Private Rodger D. Andrews, 18, will be laid to rest at a family plot on June 9, more than 81 years after his death. Andrews had been reported as missing in action (MIA) until June 5, 2024, when the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified his remains. The DPAA made the announcement on Oct. 2. One year later: Decatur residents reflect on progress after tornado He was assigned in June 1944 to Company C of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion in the European Theater. Andrews was killed in action on the night of June 6, 1944, when Allied forces that had landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy 'suffered heavy losses from enemy shelling and strafing by enemy aircraft', according to his service member profile. However, it is not known exactly what happened to Andrews during the battle, 'Unfortunately, he did not live to see his 19th birthday,' Sanders said during her remarks on Monday. Andrews' remains were buried as an unknown in the United States Military Cemetery St. Laurent (now called the Normandy American Cemetery) on June 13, 1944, as they could not be conclusively identified at the time. The U.S. Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission personnel exhumed Andrews' remains from the Normandy American Cemetery for scientific analysis in March 2019. Andrews' remains were initially designated X-48 St. Laurent, and he was found to be wearing a belt with the initials 'R.D.A.' Gateway mayor and murder victim's sister reacts to Arkansas prisoner escape 'However, because items of clothing could have been traded amongst different servicemembers and due to physical similarities between X-48 and other missing servicemembers being too close for officials to make a definite association, the AGRC was unable to identify the remains,' a news release from DPAA in October said. DPAA received a request from Andrews' family in December 2014 to devote more time to locating him. Historians reviewed other Omaha Beach losses and reassessed the circumstances of his death. They noted the initials on the belt found with 'X-48' as a possible association. 'After additional historical and scientific comparisons between the personnel data of missing servicemembers from Omaha Beach and the attributes of X-48, the Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission workers exhumed the Unknown in March 2019 and transferred the remains to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis,' the release said. Scientists identified Andrews' remains by using anthropological, dental and other circumstantial evidence. His name is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Independent
27-05-2025
- General
- The Independent
Breakthrough for families 12 years after WWII bomber crash
The remains of four crew members from the WWII bomber "Heaven Can Wait," which crashed off the coast of New Guinea in 1944, are being returned home after a decades-long search. The plane, a B-24, was shot down by enemy fire on March 11, 1944, resulting in the death of all 11 crew members; the wreckage was initially deemed non-recoverable. A relentless investigation by family members led to the discovery of the crash site and a recovery mission by Navy divers, who retrieved remains from 200 feet below the surface. Staff Sgt. Eugene Darrigan was buried in Wappingers Falls, New York, on Saturday, and 2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly was buried in Livermore, California, on Monday; 1st Lt. Herbert Tennyson and 2nd Lt. Donald Sheppick will be interred in the coming months. The recovery and repatriation were made possible through the efforts of Project Recover and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), with a possible future mission to account for the remaining seven crew members still missing.
Yahoo
25-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
8 decades after dying in Pearl Harbor attack, Georgia-born sailor gets Arlington farewell
Virginia Connolly accepts a folded flag during ceremony honoring her father John Connolly at Arlington National Cemetery in March 2025. (Photo by Tracey Attlee/Special to the SC Daily Gazette) More than 80 years after he died in the attack on Pearl Harbor, John Connolly was finally laid to rest — not as an unknown in a mass grave, but as a naval officer in Arlington National Cemetery. When the Navy first called to tell his daughter, Virginia Harbison, that her father's remains had been identified, she hung up. At 91, living in assisted care in Texas, she could hardly believe it. It was her son, Bill Ingram, who called her back to share the news again. She was silent for so long that he had to ask if she was all right. 'Bill,' she said, 'I hadn't thought about that for 60 years.' She has lived the full life her father never had the chance to. In March, Ingram pushed his mother in her wheelchair to her father's gravesite for the burial. 'They fold the flag in this very tight, nice triangle, and then with white gloves, the commanding officer comes and takes it and kneels down and hands it to my mother,' said Ingram, who lives in San Francisco. 'It was incredible.' On Dec. 7, 1941, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, 429 service members aboard the USS Oklahoma died. Horrifyingly, men trapped below deck after the ship capsized could be heard tapping out 'SOS' in Morse code as the air supply dwindled. Though 32 men were rescued, the rest were tragically not reached in time. After the war ended, the remains were recovered and buried in the National Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, too water damaged and commingled to be identified individually. There they remained for years until modern science caught up with historical tragedy. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) disinterred the USS Oklahoma remains in 2015 to send to a DNA laboratory. Carrie LeGarde, a forensic archaeologist with the agency and project lead for the Oklahoma Project, said her team started the process by testing small pieces of bone for maternal line DNA. Overall, they inventoried 13,000 bones and took 4,900 DNA samples. For Connolly, identification was complicated. 'We had several sequences that had multiple individuals, and that was actually the case with John Connolly, and part of why his identification occurred later in the project,' she said. Since John Connolly was older than most of the men aboard the USS Oklahoma as one of the few officers on the ship and scheduled to retire just three weeks after the bombing, the team at DPAA relied on dental evidence in addition to DNA testing to confirm his identity. Connolly was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1893 and joined the Navy in 1912. He served during World War I and was eventually promoted to a chief warrant officer. In 1941, his wife, Mary Connolly, and their two daughters, 8-year-old Virginia and 6-year-old Helen were eagerly awaiting his return and retirement in Long Beach, California, when the Navy informed them he had died. Mary Connolly never remarried. 'She was very sad all her life because she married at age 30 or 31 and her husband was away in the service but was killed right before he was supposed to retire,' Ingram said. Connolly's memory has been passed down through the generations. 'We've taken my family to Hawaii, and we went to the memorial and found the marker for his name,' Ingram said. Everything changed last year when Ingram got a call from the Navy. In a 200-page report, the Navy detailed the historical background, identification process and scientific evidence. 'With the research that was involved, both with historical research and medical research, there's a lot of folks at DPAA that are involved,' Navy POW/MIA branch head Richard Jenkins said. 'We as a service will explain that to the family, with the hopes of them feeling comfortable with the findings and showing them that it's not just any set of remains, it's actually going to be that person.' There's a story that runs in Ingram's family about his grandfather: A couple of years after World War II, a young man knocked on the family home and introduced himself to Virginia and Mary Connolly. He had been on the USS Oklahoma with John Connolly, he said, and when the ship was hit, Connolly pushed open a hatch and forced him out. Connolly had saved his life. In 1944, the Navy re-commissioned one of their ships as the USS John Connolly. Though his story was a tragic one — an officer who never returned home whose remains were left unknown — history has granted him a second chance at closure. Over eight decades later, he got the hero's burial he deserved. 'They did everything. They had a band. They played Taps. They fired the guns,' Ingram said. 'Seven soldiers fired three times for a 21-gun salute.' A final sendoff at last.
