Airmen Missing In Action From WWII are Identified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of eleven U.S. airmen, missing in action from World War II, have been identified and are being returned to their families for burial with full military honors.

They are Capt. Thomas C. Paschal, El Monte, Calif.; 1st Lt. Frank P. Giugliano, New York, N.Y.; 1st Lt. James P. Gullion, Paris, Texas; 2nd Lt. Leland A. Rehmet, San Antonio, Texas; 2nd Lt. John A. Widsteen, Palo Alto, Calif., Staff Sgt. Richard F. King, Moultrie, Ga.; Staff Sgt. William Lowery, Republic, Pa..; Staff Sgt. Elgin J. Luckenbach, Luckenbach, Texas.; Staff Sgt. Marion B. May, Amarillo, Texas.; Sgt. Marshall P. Borofsky, Chicago, Ill.; Sgt. Walter G. Harm, Philadelphia, Penn.; all U.S. Army Air Forces.

The group remains of the entire crew are to be buried today at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, DC, as are the individual remains of each man with the exception of King, Giugliano and Widsteen, whose families have elected hometown burials.

On April 16, 1944, Paschal and Widsteen were piloting a B-24J Liberator with the other nine men aboard. The aircraft was returning to Nadzab, New Guinea after bombing enemy targets near Hollandia. The plane was last seen off the coast of the island flying into poor weather.

The loss was investigated following the war and a military board concluded that the aircraft had been lost over water and was unrecoverable.

In early 2001 a team of specialists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) interviewed a native of Papua New Guinea who claimed to have found the aircraft crash and recovered identification media for May and Harm. The team surveyed the site in 2002 and found wreckage that matched Paschal’s aircraft tail number along with human remains. They also took custody of remains previously collected by the villager.

Later that year, two additional JPAC teams excavated the crash site and recovered additional human remains and crew-related artifacts. Identification tags were found for Luckenbach, May and Paschal. Other crew-related materials found were consistent with items used by the Army Air Forces around 1944.

Mitochondrial DNA obtained from dental and bone samples was one of the forensic tools used by JPAC scientists and Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory specialists to identify the airmen.

For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO website at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703)-699-1169.

Some more on this crew loss. There are many USAAF aircraft laying wrecked in the mountains of New Guinea.

Remains of 'Black Sunday' airmen returning home for burial

By Nicole Gaudiano

WASHNGTON — On April 16, 1944, Capt. Thomas Paschal and his B-24J crew vanished in the clouds.

Paschal's Liberator and more than 300 other planes were returning from a bombing run over Dutch New Guinea during World War II when they ran into what one pilot called the "worst storm I ever saw."

The bad weather gave the American planes a tougher fight than they had gotten from the Japanese, claiming 54 crew members and 37 aircraft, including Paschal's plane.

It was the Army Air Forces' greatest non-combat aviation loss in World War II. Thirty fighter and bomber crew members are still missing.

But almost exactly 62 years after the day known as "Black Sunday," the remains of Paschal and 10 fellow crew members will come home for a long-overdue burial. Their families will attend a funeral service on April 21 at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

"It's just an emotional closure because all these years we really didn't know what happened at the end," said June Robertson of West Jordan, Utah. Her older brother, 2nd Lt. John Widsteen, was Paschal's co-pilot. "It's a feeling, he's coming home."

The 1944 storm didn't happen without warning. A weather unit commander knew a severe front was forming and had argued for canceling the mission. But he was overruled, author Michael John Claringbould wrote in "Black Sunday," a book about the disaster.

Maps were wrong

Along with the bad weather, the pilots had to deal with inaccurate maps that underestimated the heights of surrounding mountains.

Fifth Air Force planes already had pounded Japanese airfields and supplies seven times in Hollandia — now Jayapura in western New Guinea. Military leaders viewed that Sunday's mission as a chance to further soften the area for an upcoming land invasion, Claringbould wrote. The Japanese offered only light resistance, and no U.S. planes were lost that day to enemy gunfire.

Paschal's plane, which Claringbould said was called "Royal Flush," remained in formation on the return flight with five other Red Raider 408th squadron Liberators until the storm hit near Saidor, records show. Paschal had been promoted to captain just eight days earlier.

"We passed through an exceptionally dark cloud formation, and when we emerged, Capt. Paschal ... was no longer in our formation," 1st Lt. Dwain E. Harry wrote in an April 20, 1944, statement.

For decades, one crew member's cousin, Saverio Giugliano wrote letters to people inside and outside the military, hoping someone had found the plane. As a young soldier, he had invaded Hollandia with the 24th Division six days after 1st Lt. Frank P. Giugliano's fatal flight.

Saverio Giugliano has clear memories of the hot, humid island, and he didn't want to think that his cousin — the smiling bombardier in a black and white photo, the "kibitzer" who teased the girl cousins at family gatherings — would remain in that jungle forever.

"I felt that if they found him, at least he would be buried by his mom and dad," said Giugliano, of Berwick, Pa.

Hunter found wreckage

About four years ago, a villager hunting wallaby high up in the Finisterre Mountains of Papua New Guinea reported finding the rusting hulks of two B-24s in the Lae region near Kunukio.

"The people (where the planes were found) are afraid of ghosts," said Gwen Haugen, the civilian forensic anthropologist who led the 2002 recovery effort. "Nothing had been touched. It was almost as it had come to lay, and how time and gravity had moved it."

Using a helicopter, rappel lines and scaffolding, a military recovery team spent several months in austere conditions excavating the crash site. They found the cockpit caught in the trees, a piece of nose art that seemed to depict playing cards, and human remains near where the airmen would have been sitting on the aircraft.

Near the bomb racks, they found Giugliano's remains in a shredded bomber jacket. His broken sunglasses were still inside a case tucked into his pocket. Haugen saw his dog tag and thought, "Frank Giugliano, you're going home."

Saverio Giugliano heard the news and "cried like a baby." He called Frank's other cousin, Joe Cassese, in Ozone Park, Queens, N.Y.

"I got little goose pimples," said Cassese, 84, a former Marine who saw Frank Giugliano in Hawaii just before he died. "We all want him back."

James Paschal, Thomas Paschal's brother, said his family was told the Royal Flush had gone down in the ocean, an explanation most of them accepted.

Father awaited son's return

"My father, for as long as he lived, was expecting my brother to walk back into the door at any time," said James, 76, of Topeka, Kan.

Tom Paschal rose through the enlisted ranks before the Army taught him to fly. He was engaged to his high school sweetheart. He had dark, Cherokee good looks. And he was "the boss" as far as his three younger siblings were concerned, James Paschal recalled.

"He was always my hero," Paschal said. "He just lived up to it."

At least two of the men who flew on the Royal Flush will be buried in their families' hometowns, according to their families' wishes. The rest will be buried at Arlington. Soldiers will escort the crew's caskets from the military's Central Identification Lab in Hawaii to their place of burial.

For Paschal, it wasn't a tough decision to bury his brother in Arlington.

"I'm sure, knowing my brother, he'd want to be with his men," he said. "If I died with my crew, I think I'd like to stay with them, and I'm sure that he would be the same way."

More echoes:

Echoes of the Past

27 March, 2006
Sisters connect with echo of the past
BY TOM McNAMEE SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Four years ago this Wednesday, Theresa Zagore was driving home from work when her cell phone rang. "Are you related to William Lowery?" a woman asked.

"Um, yes," Zagore said. "He was my uncle."

In her mind, in that instant, she could see him. Uncle Willie. The handsome young soldier in an old family photo. Her mother's brother. He died in a plane crash in World War II before she, Zagore, was even born.

Who was calling about Uncle Willie?

"Can you hold on while I pull over?" Zagore asked, feeling excited and strange. "Do you have information about him?"

"Yes," said the woman on the phone. "I think I do."

And that's how Uncle Willie returned as a bittersweet spirit, a soft echo of the past, to Zagore and her sister, Marie Alexander.

The caller told Zagore that the remains of Army Staff Sgt. William Lowery had been discovered, 57 long years after his bomber crashed, in a remote ravine in Papua New Guinea.

Zagore brushed back tears when she heard the news. And when Marie heard the news from her sister, she cried, too.

They cried for their mother, Florence, who would have loved this day. And for their mother's brothers and sisters, all of whom have died, who never forgot the brother they lost.

And for Uncle Willie, who was coming home.

Smart and funny

They were a big Italian-American family in a little mining town, Republic, Pa.

There was Frank Lowery, born Carmine Laurito in Salerno, Italy. And his wife, Angelina, also from Salerno. And there were their seven children, born in the U.S.A.

Willie was the oldest son, born in 1911. He was really smart -- Zagore and Alexander always heard that -- and very short, until he hit a last-minute growth spurt. He also joked a lot.

I wish I could tell you more about Willie, but that's about all Marie and Theresa could tell me, which no doubt is how it is in most families.

What little Alexander and Zagore know about their uncle, they picked up as children by chance at family parties and picnics. Somebody might mention this or that, and somebody else might say, "I wish Willie could have seen that."

Willie's parents struggled to make ends meet. Frank was a miner. Angelina had health problems and often was bedridden.

As the eldest son, Willie felt a responsibility to help support the family, and so in the early 1930s -- the heart of the Great Depression -- he hit the road looking for work.

He traveled from Bristol, Va., to Cleveland, Ohio, to Effingham, Ill., to Littleton, Colo. He passed through Chicago at least once, and spent a week or so in El Paso, Texas. We know this because he mailed postcards home, although he wasn't much for travelogues.

"Mother," he wrote in a typically short note. "Everything is fine. I'm taking care of myself. Do not worry."

When the United States entered the war, Willie joined the Army. He trained in Florida as a gunner on a bomber, then shipped out to the South Pacific. Two of his brothers, Columbus and Nicholas, also were in uniform.

As before, Willie worried about his folks.

"I am glad to hear that you planned to visit home during the Easter holidays," he wrote to Florence on March 14, 1944. "Father would have felt quite lonely with three of the boys away."

On April 16, 1944, a month after writing that letter, Willie's plane, a B-24J Liberator bomber, ran a strike mission on Japanese targets near Hollandia, New Guinea. As it attempted to return to base, it went down in a storm.

For a few years after that, the Army listed Sgt. Lowery and his 10 fellow crew members as missing in action. But in 1949, the Army concluded the plane must have crashed into the Pacific and the entire crew had been killed.

Not that Willie's family completely believed it. Florence, for one, never fully accepted that Willie was gone, nor did her brother Columbus.

"I know my Uncle Columbus, whowas a prisoner of war himself, always used to say Willie was alive somewhere," Alexander said. "If he'd had one too many drinks, he'd say, 'He's probably out there somewhere. He probably lost his memory.'"

Didn't anybody try to set him right?

"Nobody really wanted to say, 'no, that's not the case,'" she said, "because that was his hope."

A ring is found

This story moves now to 2001, late in the year. A man is hiking in a rain forest near the village of Kunukio in Papua New Guinea. He sees something shiny and picks it up. It's a ring, clearly American, possibly a wedding or aviator's ring.

He shows the ring to a local magistrate, who shows it to others, who bring it to the attention of officials at the U.S. Embassy.

In January 2002, a U.S. team of excavators and forensic archeologists swoop into the ravine. They are from the Joint P.O.W./M.I.A. Accounting Command, a remarkable agency dedicated to finding and identifying the American remains from all wars. An estimated 88,000 military personnel remain unaccounted for, including 78,000 from World War II.

Immediately, they find stuff: A high school class ring. A bracelet from the 1940 World's Fair. Wristwatches. Lighters.

One major discovery solves the mystery: The tail of an American bomber, with a serial number on it.

And there are the grimmer finds: Bones and skulls and more bones. Dog tags with precious names.

When the digging is done, the command tracks down the families of all 11 soldiers, and the phone calls go out.

A woman calls somebody named Theresa Zagore, who lives in a Chicago suburb called Hoffman Estates. She asks, "Are you related to William Lowery?"

Honoring the crew

On April 21, the remains of all 11 crewmen will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Their families, flown in by the Army, will finally be able to pray over their graves.

I know a bit about only one of the crewmen -- Sgt. Lowery -- but I'd like to honor them all, so let me at least tell you their names:

*Capt. Thomas C. Paschal
*Second Lt. John A. Widsteen
*First Lt. James P. Gullion
*First Lt. Frank P. Giugliano
*Second Lt. Leland A. Rehmet
*Staff Sgt. Elgin J. Luckenbach
*Staff Sgt. Marion B. May
*Staff Sgt. Richard F. King
*Sgt. Marshall P. Borofsky
*Sgt. Walter G. Harm

As I sat at the dining room table in Zagore's house, looking at yellowed letters from a soldier neither she nor her sister had ever met, I wondered why they cared so much about him.

But wasn't Uncle Willie, for them, really just a handful of photos and old stories?

"Our mother never let him go, so we never let him go," Zagore said. "He was alive to us."

"And," Alexander said, "he gave his life for his country."

Tom McNamee's "The Chicago Way" runs Mondays in the Chicago Sun-Times.
2006, Digital Chicago Inc.

The Moutrie Ga. newspaper covers the return of a long lost soldier:

Published: April 10, 2006 10:45 pm

Lost airman’s remains are returned here for burial

John Oxford

MOULTRIE — A Moultrie native who was lost at sea during World War II will be laid to rest almost 62 years to the day of his fateful mission.

Staff Sgt. Richard Fowler King, 26, was a radio operator in the 408th Bomb Squadron, 22nd Group of the U.S. Air Force. On April 16, 1944, he was a radio operator on a B24-J Liberator stationed in Nadzab, New Guinea, that completed a successful mission to bomb Hollandia, now Jayapura, in Indonesia.

The B24-J Liberator had completed the mission but ran into a tropical storm off the coast of New Guinea. The plane never returned to Nadzab following the mission and was listed as “Missing In Action” by the Air Force. That status was changed to “Presumed Dead” in 1946 after an Air Force Review Board concluded that it was likely that the Aircraft had been lost over water and that the remains of all 11 crewmen were unrecoverable.

Inez Jenkins, who was married to King at the time of his disappearance, said he was a very fine young man, and she had known him since they were both young. They became good friends through grade school and graduated from Moultrie High School together when they were 18 and were married at 20 years old.

“He was a good friend and a good school pal,” Jenkins, who still resides in Moultrie, said. “He was all together an all-around, upright person. He was truly a Christian and an all-around good person, and my high school years were enhanced by his friendship.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii happened shortly after they were married, and Jenkins said King was drafted and chosen to be a part of the bombing crew in training. They were married for about two-and-a-half years before King was sent overseas to fight in the Pacific Theater during World War II and was stationed in New Guinea.

It took about two weeks for her to be notified of King’s bomber being lost following their mission to Hollandia, Jenkins said. During that period, she continued to receive letters from King, including one sent the day before the fateful mission telling her about it in code between the two, meaning it was a special mission for him.

Jenkins said two lieutenants came to her office and asked to speak with her about King, and she knew something was wrong. After that initial news, she would receive updates by mail, in phone or in person from the Air Force about the status of King and attempts to locate him and the downed plane, but it was not located for over 50 years.

In 2001, however, a hunter reported finding a U.S. aircraft in a forest near Saider, New Guinea. After almost two years of searching the area and obtaining DNA samples from surviving family members, all 11 crew members, including King, were positively identified.

Jenkins said she was notified in 2001 that the plane had been found and identified and that all the crew members, including King, had lost their lives. In the crash, the plane had been partially torn, and remains were found inside and outside of the plane.

King was identified using a DNA sample from his sister, Ellen Raiford of Jacksonville, Fla., his only living relative after being found, Jenkins said.

Jenkins said various personal items were found by the research crew, including rings, dog tags and fragments from shoes, gloves and leather jackets. One of those items found was Jenkins’ high school class ring, which she ordered in King’s size and exchanged it with his class ring, which had been ordered in her size, a sign of their friendship throughout grade school.

“Ours was a friendship that grew into love and marriage,” Jenkins said.

The Air Force report on their findings was released to each surviving family member, and Jenkins said an Air Force representative personally went through the report with them. Paul Bethke, the head of the Air Force Search Committee, spent a November afternoon with Jenkins and Raiford explaining everything to them.

The news that King’s bomber had been found in 2001 brought mixed emotions, Jenkins said.

“It was something we have wanted to know definitively,” Jenkins said. “We did not know for sure until 2001.”

All of those personal items that were not positively identified and all unidentified remains from the crash site will be placed into one casket and will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Friday, April 21, Jenkins said. All 11 names of the B24-J crew, including King, will be placed on the grave’s tombstone with a description of the plane and mission.

Jenkins said King’s burial will be held with full military rites on Saturday, April 15. First Sgt. Gary Stone from Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga., will be in charge of the strictly military service, and the service will be fitting for King.

“I wanted the service done this way because these men, including my husband, deserve this,” Jenkins said.

Details of the services had not been completed as of press time.

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