Wappings Falls, New York – As World War II bomber heaven hit an enemy fire from the Pacific Island of New Guinea on March 11, 1944, the co-pilot managed the final salute to the flyer on an adjacent plane before crashing into the water.
All 11 people on board were killed. Their bodies, deep within the vast ocean, were designated as unrecoverable.
However, the ruins of the four-person crew are beginning to return to their homeland after a surprising investigation by the family and a recovery mission involving elite navy divers who have descended 200 feet on bells pressurized to reach the sea bed.
Staff Sergeant Radio Operator Eugene Darligan was buried with military honor and community support in Wappings Falls, his hometown of Wappings Falls, more than 80 years after leaving his wife and baby son on Saturday.
Bombardier, second Lt. Col. Thomas Kelly, was buried Monday in Livermore, California, where he grew up in a ranch family. The pilot’s ruins, Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Tennyson and navigator, second Donald Shepic, will be buried in the coming months.
The ceremony takes place 12 years after one of Kelly’s relatives, Scott Altoaus, set out to solve the mystery of exactly where the plane is.
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“I’m very grateful,” he told The Associated Press. “It was an impossible journey. We could never have reached today. And we are 81 years from now.”
March 11, 1944: Bomber
The Army Air Force plane, known as the Nickname of Heaven, was a B-24 with a cartoon pinup angel painted on its nose and 11 crew members in the final flight.
When the plane was shot down, they were on a mission to bomb Japanese targets. Other flyers for the mission were unable to find survivors.
Their wives, parents and siblings were from a generation that tended to quarrel firmly in their grief. However, the man was seriously overlooked.
Sheppick, 26, and Tennyson, 24, left behind a pregnant wife who could write two or three letters a day each. Darrigan, 26, is also married and was able to attend the baptism of her son during his vacation. The photo shows him wearing his uniform and smiling while he holds the boy.
Darligan’s wife, Florence, remarried, but quietly hugged a photo of her late husband and a telegram informing him of his death.
Tennyson’s wife, Jean, lived until the age of 96 and did not remarry.
“She doesn’t believe he’ll go home,” said her grandson, Scott Jefferson.
2013 Anniversary: Search
As Memorial Day approached 12 years ago, Arteus asked his mother for the name of his relative who died in World War II.
Arteus, a professor of political science and communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, became interested while studying the victims of World War II. His mother gave him the name of her cousin Thomas Kelly, who was 21 years old when he was reported missing during the action.
Althaus recalled that as a boy he visited Kelly’s memorial stone. He began reading on the lost plane.
“It was a mystery that I discovered that it was really important to my extended family,” he said.
With the help of other relatives, he analyzed historical documents, photographs, and eyewitness recollections. They sometimes weighed conflicting explanations of where the plane went. After four years of investigation, Althaus wrote a report, concluded that the bomber likely crashed from Awar Point, which is now Papua New Guinea
The report was shared with Project Recover, a nonprofit organization that promises to find and resend missing American service members and partners in the Defense Pow/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). The Project Recover team, led by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, found a debris field in 2017 after searching the seabed near 10 square miles.
DPAA launched its deepest underwater recovery mission in 2023.
In urgent contact, the Navy Dive team recovered a dog tag containing partially corroded tags of Darrigan with his wife Florence’s name. Kelly’s ring has been retrieved. The stones were gone, but the word Bombardier was still easy to read.
And they were left over recovering and undergoing DNA testing. Last September, the military officially described Darligan, Kelly, Shepic and Tennyson.
The seven men on the plane are not yet accounted for, so future DPAA missions to the site are possible.
Anniversary 2025: Belated Return
More than 200 people in Wappings Falls on Saturday honored Darrigan, with some waving flags from the sidewalk during a procession to the church, while others paying tribute to him at a cemetery ceremony under the cloudy sky.
“Eighty years later, this great soldier has returned to rest,” Darligan’s great nie, Susan Pineiro, told mourners at the cemetery.
Darrigan’s son passed away in 2020, but his grandson, Eric Schindler, was present.
85-year-old nie Virginia Pineiro of Darrigan has accepted the folded flag strictly.
Kelly’s body arrived in the Bay Area on Friday. He was to be buried on a parcel of his family’s cemetery on Monday. A procession of foreign war veterans passes Kelly’s old house and high school before he is buried.
“I don’t think Tom Kelly’s memories will go away anytime soon,” said Artaud, who is currently a project recovery volunteer.
Sheppick will be buried in the Pennsylvania Call Center cemetery for several months near his parents. His nie, Deborah Weinland, said he thought her late father, Shepic’s younger brother, wanted it that way. My son Sheppick never met in high school.
Tennyson will be buried June 27th in Wichita, Kansas. He is buried next to his wife, Jean. Jean passed away in 2017 months before the wreckage was found.
“I think she didn’t believe he was back with her, so I think it was because she believed she was only proven right,” Jefferson said.
By Michael Hill
