One Brick Short

They keep looking, they keep finding and they keep sending them home.

Nigh on to a dozen U.S. Army Air Corps airmen have come home after more than 60 years of rest in the New Guinea jungle. Their story goes like this: On Dec. 3, 1943, the 11 men piled into their B-24D Liberator bomber in Dobodura, New Guinea to seek and attack Japanese forces on New Hanover Island in the Bismarck Sea.

Via radio, the crew reported dropping their bombs on their target. They kept in contact on their way back to base but contact was lost and the crew never came back. Subsequent searches in the heavily forested, lightly inhabited area failed to locate the aircraft.

Fast forward 60 years.  In 2000, three Papua, New Guineans were hunting in the forest when they came across aircraft wreckage near Iwaia village and passed the word up the line until it landed in the lap of the Department of Defense’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC). In 2002, a JPAC team traveled to Deboin Village to interview two individuals who said they knew where the crash site was, but the witnesses could not relocate the site.

In 2004, the site was found again, about four miles from Iwaia village in Papua, New Guinea, and an aircraft data plate that connected the wreckage to the missing flight. Between 2004 and 2007, JPAC teams conducted two excavations of the site and recovered human remains and non-biological material including some crew-related artifacts such as identification tags.

Using DNA and other methods, the DoD ID’d the crew. They are Capt. Robert L. Coleman, of Wilmington, Del.; 1st Lt. George E. Wallinder, of San Antonio, Texas; 2nd Lt. Kenneth L. Cassidy, of Worcester, Mass.; 2nd Lt. Irving Schechner, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; 2nd Lt. Ronald F. Ward, of Cambridge, Mass.; Tech. Sgt. William L. Fraser, of Maplewood, Mo.; Tech. Sgt. Paul Miecias, of Piscataway, N.J.; Tech. Sgt. Robert C. Morgan, of Flint, Mich.; Staff Sgt. Albert J. Caruso, of Kearny, N.J.; Staff Sgt. Robert E. Frank, of Plainfield, N.J.; and Pvt. Joseph Thompson, of Compton, Calif.

The dates and locations of the funerals are being set by their families.