The crash of WWII bomber “Heaven Can Wait” killed 11 U.S. airmen. Now 4 are lastly being laid to relaxation.

Because the World Warfare II bomber “Heaven Can Wait” was hit by enemy fireplace off the Pacific island of New Guinea on March 11, 1944, the co-pilot managed a ultimate salute to flyers in an adjoining aircraft earlier than crashing into the water.

All 11 males aboard have been killed. Their stays, deep beneath the huge sea, have been designated as non-recoverable.

But 4 crew members’ stays are starting to return to their hometowns after a exceptional investigation by members of the family and a restoration mission involving elite Navy divers who descended 200 toes in a pressurized bell to achieve the ocean flooring.

Workers Sgt. Eugene Darrigan, the radio operator was buried with navy honors and group help on Saturday in his hometown of Wappingers Falls, New York, greater than eight many years after forsaking his spouse and child son.

The bombardier, 2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly, was to be buried Monday in Livermore, California, the place he grew up in a ranching household. The stays of the pilot, 1st Lt. Herbert Tennyson, and navigator, 2nd Lt. Donald Sheppick, will likely be interred within the coming months.

The ceremonies are occurring 12 years after one among Kelly’s family, Scott Althaus, got down to resolve the thriller of the place precisely the aircraft went down.

“I’m just so grateful,” he informed The Related Press. “It’s been an impossible journey — just should never have been able to get to this day. And here we are, 81 years later.”

The Military Air Forces aircraft nicknamed “Heaven Can Wait” was a B-24 with a cartoon pin-up angel painted on its nostril and a crew of 11 on its ultimate flight.

They have been on a mission to bomb Japanese targets when the aircraft was shot down. Army officers consider anti-aircraft fireplace hit the aircraft, inflicting one of many bombs it was carrying to blow up, the Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company stated in a information launch. Different flyers on the mission weren’t in a position to spot survivors. 

“After the bombing run the formation circled to the right and endeavored with binoculars to see signs of survivors,” Sgt. Arnold S. Smith, a waist gunner aboard one other aircraft within the formation, stated on the time. “I could see no evidence that bodies remained at the surface.”

“She never stopped believing”

The wives, dad and mom and siblings of the boys who died on “Heaven Can Wait” have been of a era that tended to be tight-lipped of their grief. However the males have been sorely missed.

Sheppick, 26, and Tennyson, 24, every left behind pregnant wives who would generally write them two or three letters a day. Darrigan, 26, additionally was married, and had been in a position to attend his son’s baptism whereas on depart. A photograph reveals him in uniform, smiling as he holds the boy.

Darrigan’s spouse, Florence, remarried however quietly held on to pictures of her late husband, in addition to a telegram informing her of his loss of life.

Tennyson’s spouse, Jean, lived till age 96 and by no means remarried.

“She never stopped believing that he was going to come home,” stated her grandson, Scott Jefferson.

As Memorial Day approached twelve years in the past, Althaus requested his mom for names of family who died in World Warfare II.

Althaus, a political science and communications professor on the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, grew to become curious whereas researching World Warfare II casualties for work. His mom gave him the identify of her cousin Thomas Kelly, who was 21 years previous when he was reported lacking in motion.

Althaus recalled that as a boy, he visited Kelly’s memorial stone, which has a bomber engraved on it. He started studying up on the misplaced aircraft.

“It was a mystery that I discovered really mattered to my extended family,” he stated.

With assist from different family, he analyzed historic paperwork, pictures and eyewitness recollections. They weighed generally conflicting accounts of the place the aircraft went down. After a four-year investigation, Althaus wrote a report concluding that the bomber probably crashed off of Awar Level in what’s now Papua New Guinea.

The report was shared with Mission Get better, a nonprofit dedicated to discovering and repatriating lacking American service members and a accomplice of the Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company, or DPAA. A group from Mission Get better, led by researchers from Scripps Establishment of Oceanography, positioned the particles discipline in 2017 after looking almost 10 sq. miles of seafloor.

The DPAA launched its deepest ever underwater restoration mission in 2023.

A Navy dive group recovered canine tags, together with Darrigan’s partially corroded tag along with his the identify of his spouse, Florence, as an emergency contact. Kelly’s ring was recovered. The stone was gone, however the phrase BOMBARDIER was nonetheless legible.

They recovered stays that underwent DNA testing. Final September, the navy formally accounted for Darrigan, Kelly, Sheppick and Tennyson.

With seven males who have been on the aircraft nonetheless unaccounted for, a future DPAA mission to the location is feasible.

Airmen laid to relaxation 

Greater than 200 individuals honored Darrigan on Saturday in Wappingers Falls, some waving flags from the sidewalk throughout the procession to the church, others saluting him at a graveside ceremony beneath cloudy skies.

“After 80 years, this great soldier has come home to rest,” Darrigan’s nice niece, Susan Pineiro, informed mourners at his graveside.

Darrigan’s son died in 2020, however his grandson Eric Schindler attended.

Darrigan’s 85-year-old niece, Virginia Pineiro, solemnly accepted the folded flag.

Kelly’s stays arrived within the Bay Space on Friday. He was buried Monday at his household’s cemetery plot, proper by the marker with the bomber etched on it. A procession of Veterans of Overseas Wars motorcyclists will move by Kelly’s previous dwelling and highschool earlier than he’s interred.

“I think it’s very unlikely that Tom Kelly’s memory is going to fade soon,” stated Althaus, now a volunteer with Mission Get better.

Sheppick will likely be buried within the months forward close to his dad and mom in a cemetery in Coal Heart, Pennsylvania. His niece, Deborah Wineland, stated she thinks her late father, Sheppick’s youthful brother, would have wished it that manner. The son Sheppick by no means met died of most cancers whereas in highschool.

Tennyson will likely be interred on June 27 in Wichita, Kansas. He’ll be buried beside his spouse, Jean, who died in 2017, simply months earlier than the wreckage was positioned.

“I think because she never stopped believing that he was coming back to her, that it’s only fitting she be proven right,” Jefferson stated.