WWII Soldiers Finally Return Home Decades After Being Declared ‘Non-Recoverable’

The remains of four American World War II soldiers, whose plane was shot down by enemy fire in 1944 and crashed off the Pacific Ocean, have finally been returned to their loved ones.

Staff Sgt. Eugene Darrigan,  2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly, 1st Lt. Herbert Tennyson and 2nd Lt. Donald Sheppick were accounted for in September, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced. Their remains were found in 2023 by an underwater recovery team that excavated the crash site.

The four soldiers were among 11 who were on board the aircraft Heaven Can Wait that took part in a bombing mission when it received anti-aircraft fire, the department said.

Witnesses from other aircraft during the March 11, 1944, mission said they saw “flames erupting from the bomb bay, spreading to the tail quickly” before the plane plunged into the waters of Hansa Bay, Papua New Guinea, killing all 11, according to the agency. Despite other aircraft circling around the crash site, no survivors from Heaven Can Wait were seen.

Exhaustive searches were conducted in the battle areas and crash sites of Papua New Guinea in 1948 following the end of the war.

“In March 1950, a board of AGRS [American Graves Registration Service] officials concluded they were unable to locate any remains” of the other Heaven Can Wait crew members, the department said. “They were designated as non-recoverable.”

At the time of his death, radio operator Darrigan, 26, was married and had a young son, the Associated Press reported, adding that navigator Sheppick, 26, and pilot Tennyson, 24, left behind pregnant wives.

It was only in 2013 that the family of bombardier Kelly undertook an investigative mission to collect historical documents and eyewitness accounts about the Heaven Can Wait crew, said the accounting agency. They collaborated with Dr. Scott Althaus of the University of Illinois — who is also Kelly’s first cousin removed  —  to help with their efforts.

In a report that he wrote after a four-year investigation, Althaus suggested that the aircraft probably crashed off Awar Point in what is now Papua New Guinea, the AP reported. The report was then shared with the nonprofit Project Recover, whose team located the debris field in 2017.

Then in 2023, an underwater recovery team excavated the crash site, where they retrieved “possible osseous materials and various material evidence, to include life support equipment and identification tags. The recovered evidence was sent to the DPAA Laboratory for review and analysis,” the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said.

Scientists were able to identify the remains of the four fallen soldiers using “dental and anthropological analysis, as well as material and circumstantial evidence,” officials added.

Darrigan was buried in his hometown of Wappingers Falls, N.Y., on Saturday, May 24, the AP reported. Kelly, the bombardier, was expected to be buried in Livermore, Calif., on Monday, May 26. Meanwhile, the remains of Tennyson and Sheppick will be interred in the coming months, according to the report.

“I’m just feeling a lot of gratitude right now,” Althaus told The Washington Post.

“I’m sure I will be flooded with emotions,” he added. “How can it be that our family is living what should be an impossible story? What made it possible was many people along the way stopping and remembering.”