U of I professor helps recover WWII airman’s remains 81 years later
U of I Professor helps recover WWII airman?s remains 81 years later
Eighty-one years after being reported missing in action, a second lieutenant shot down in the Pacific during World War II is finally coming home ? all thanks to a University of Illinois professor who spent years playing part-time detective.
ILLINOIS - Eighty-one years after being reported missing in action, a second lieutenant shot down in the Pacific during World War II is finally coming home — all thanks to a University of Illinois professor who spent years playing part-time detective.
What we know:
American forces suffered heavy losses in the Pacific during World War II, yet the vast majority of soldiers returned home to live out their lives — including my grandfather, Larry Schneider, a mechanic who helped keep the planes flying.
But for the families of the thousands of soldiers listed as missing in action, any lasting memories are limited to what’s etched on tombstones atop empty cemetery plots. That includes 2nd Lt. Thomas V. Kelly, a bombardier believed to have been shot down off the coast of New Guinea, perishing along with the entire crew of the B-24 "Heaven Can Wait."
"There was a very large memorial stone with a picture of a B-24 Bomber from WWII on it and even at a young age, I was very interested in military history. I knew immediately what kind of plane that was and I knew that there was somebody in my family that had died in the war and had never come back," said Althaus.
Fast-forward to Memorial Day in 2013. Althaus decided to take on the role of detective. He asked his mother what she knew about Lt. Kelly’s final mission, only to learn that the lingering pain of his loss — and the uncertainty surrounding his fate — made the topic difficult for the family to revisit.
"When I was growing up, Tommy Kelly's name was never spoken and like so many members of that generation, when you have a grief that doesn't get accompanied by a casket coming back or even information about the circumstances of your loved ones loss and maybe lingering questions about whether he really died in the first place, that kind of grief with no closure ends for many MIA families as it did for ours with just silence," said Althaus.
Althaus began researching Kelly through wartime correspondence and conversations with former friends to gain a better sense of who he was. From there, it was good old-fashioned internet sleuthing that helped Althaus pinpoint Kelly’s final mission.
"Very quickly I began understanding and people were helping me walk through the process of a much richer trove of information that I would learn was available out there in documenting the experiences of Tommy's wartime unit," said Althaus.
From 2013 to 2017, Althaus conducted his research in fits and starts, often dedicating Memorial Day weekends to uncovering the possible location of Kelly’s downed B-24. Then everything changed when the nonprofit group Project Recover got involved.
Althaus handed over years of research to their team. Then they waited — until Good Friday in 2018, when a phone call changed everything.
"Very quickly, they said they found the plane and that it was under 200 feet of water, which would make it a very difficult recovery effort, if the military even chose to want to do that and they showed me for the first time images taken by an underwater robot of our relative's final resting place," Althaus said.
Finding the plane was nothing short of a miracle. Recovering the crew — that, too, would prove miraculous.
"For me and so many of our family members, we thought that was it. That the journey has probably ended at that point because there had never been a military operation attempting to recover MIA remains at a depth of water like this," Althaus said.
Project Recover passed the discovery on to military authorities. With help from the U.S. Navy, a recovery mission was launched.
Deep-water divers spent weeks on the ocean floor, painstakingly retrieving the remains of the crew.
The crew members were:
- Pilot: 1st Lt. Herbert G. Tenison
- Co-pilot: 2nd Lt. Michael L. McFadden
- Bombardier: 2nd Lt. Thomas V. Kelly
- Gunner: Staff Sgt. Donald W. Burd
- Navigator: 2nd Lt. Donald W. Sheppick
- Radioman: Tech. Sgt. Edward Gorvetzian
- Radioman: Tech. Sgt. Eugene J. Darrigan
- Photographer: Staff Sgt. John W. Emmer
What's next:
This Memorial Day weekend, 12 years after beginning his journey, Althaus and his family are in Livermore, California — the birthplace of Kelly — who has, at long last, come home.
Althaus has since joined Project Recover as a volunteer to help search for the more than 81,000 American service members still listed as missing in action.