Remains of World War II Marine from SC identified

The State ^ | Dec. 19, 2008 | SEANNA ADCOX

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The burial next month of Maj. Marion Ryan McCown Jr. in a family plot in Charleston, nearly 65 years after his plane went down in the South Pacific, brings relief and joy to a family who never thought his remains would be found, his relatives said Friday.

The Marine pilot had been missing since Jan. 20, 1944, when his single-seat F-4U Corsair failed to return from a combat mission over the island of New Britain, in Papua New Guinea. His remains were recovered from a crash site in the town of Rabaul, where the Japanese had a base, and identified earlier this year, the Defense Department's POW/Missing Personnel Office announced Friday.

"It's such a comfort. All of us just assumed he was lost at sea and would never be found, and it was going to be an unanswered question," said Jane McKinney, of Channel Islands, Calif., who was three months old when her half-brother went missing.

McCown was 27 when, on a bomber escort, his squadron tangled with 40 Japanese Zero fighter planes, said his nephew, Capt. John Almeida, a retired Navy doctor in Jacksonville, N.C.

Almeida has the flight log the Marine Corps sent his mother in the 1950s.

"It must've been a heckofa fight. His squadron lost three pilots out of 11," he said.

As for finding his uncle, "I'd given up years ago," said Almeida, 63, who was a Marine in Vietnam before serving 24 years in the Navy Medical Corps.

McCown, who left Georgia Tech for the Marines in 1942, will be buried with military honors Jan. 18 - four days after he would have turned 92 - beside his mother, sister, and grandparents at The Unitarian Church cemetery in Charleston.

Family members say the service will be a joyous occasion that will bring together relatives who are scattered across the country.

"It's going to be a fantastic trip," Almeida said. "It's opened up a whole new world I didn't know about."

That includes meeting Helen Schiller, 87, of Summerville, who was McCown's girlfriend.

"He wanted the Marines, and he wanted to fly," Schiller said.

She recalled him taking her to dinner in his dress whites whenever he came home from training in Cherry Point, N.C. She still has a box with wings he sent her before he vanished.

"Boy, I'll tell you, he was a sharp one. He was the perfect gentleman, like the old Charlestonians. He was really, really a nice fella," said the former Helen Miller of Charleston. On his identification, she added, "It was the biggest surprise in the world. Nobody knew what had happened to him."

Unbeknownst to the family, a POW/MIA team recovered McCown's identification tag and bone fragments from the South Pacific crash site in 1991, but forensic science could not identify the remains then. In 2006, when a team returned to prepare the site for recovery, a partial parachute was found, and a local villager handed over remains he said he took from the site. More remains and the wreckage were recovered last spring. Dental comparisons and other forensic and circumstantial evidence led to the identification, the Defense Department said.

Not wanting to make mistakes, the military won't identify remains based on "dog tags, because anything can happen in war," Almeida said.

In May, as remains were unearthed, McKinney and her family were vacationing in the South Pacific. Thinking French Polynesia, more than 4,000 miles from the site, was the closest she'd ever get to her brother, McKinney tossed flowers into the ocean.

It wasn't until August, when an Internet search by a McKinney friend turned up information on the excavation, that the family connected with the military. Because of his military background, Almeida was asked to make the call. "We've been looking for you," he recalled the head of the POW/MIA office saying.

"It was very exciting. We kinda felt like the sadness was long over," McKinney said. She's thankful "there are people who have just not given up finding these remains.

"We knew we weren't going to get him back. But it's been such a comfort and such a mark of respect for him and his sacrifice."

But one thing still haunts family members, said McCown's 41-year-old niece Blair McKinney. While they're grateful and understand the military can't make a conclusive identification with dog tags, they don't like to think of the 1991 find.

"The only heart-wrenching part of it as the family ... is that his two other siblings were alive in the '90s and went to their graves not knowing anything," Blair McKinney said.

The Raleigh, N.C., resident is reading her uncle's five-year diary now. She's touched by his last entry, written in 1942, when he was stationed in Quantico, Va.

"What a beautiful place," he wrote. "I might want to settle here when the war is over."

[oh8eleven]

Until 2000, there was a White Dress uniform, similar in appearance to the U.S. Navy's Dress White uniforms, but worn by officers only. This uniform has since been replaced with the Blue/White Dress uniform for officers and SNCOs.
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[Homer_J_Simpson]

Thanks for doing the research. I will adjust my mental images of formal USMC events from the WWII era in the future. I’m glad to see they considered the needs of Marine dogs in the modern era.

[GreyFriar]

Resting in peace and no longer “missing in action”

[SC Swamp Fox]

South Carolina Ping

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[zot]

Thanks for the ping. An amazing recovery story. May he rest in peace.

[TXnMA]

"FRom what I ‘ve read the Corsair was the best fighter of the Pacific air war;they still flew in the Korean War."

A surprising amount of his Corsair survived all those years.

(Note the prop & hub in the lower right of the photo.)

BTW, do you happen to know what type of "skin" the F4U had: fabric or aluminum?

[csvset]

From the article on Wikipedia regarding Corsairs:

The large fuselage panels were made of magnesium and were attached to the frames with the newly-developed technique of spot welding, thus mostly eliminating the use of rivets.

While employing this new technology, the Corsair was also the last American-produced fighter aircraft to feature fabric as the skinning for the top and bottom of each outer wing, aft of the main spar and armament bays, and for the ailerons, elevators and rudder.

In addition the elevators were constructed from plywood.

[TXnMA]

Thanks! That explains why the fuselage panels apparently survived, while the empennage panels did not. Also, it is apparent that the A/C did not burn: those magnesium panels would have made it one extremely hot (and bright!) fire, and much less would have survived to be recognizable...

[oh8eleven]

The first Marine mascot goes back to 1922 - with uniform!

[visualops]

He looks every bit the southern gentleman, does he not?
RIP

[SunkenCiv]

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