Remains of World War II pilot killed during spy mission identified 82 years after plane disappeared

A 21-year-old airman who disappeared during a World War II spy mission over Thailand and Burma has been accounted for, the U.S. military said Wednesday. 

U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Franklin H. McKinney was a pilot from Rhode Island and part of the 35th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, 14th Air Force, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. The squadron was nicknamed the “Redhawks.” 

On November 5, 1944, McKinney took off from a U.S. base in Yunnanyi, China to fly a reconnaissance mission over Burma and Thailand. The DPAA did not specify the goal of McKinney’s mission, but the squadron was known for daring spy missions that “helped turn the tide of the war in China,” according to the Air Force. 

No contact was made with McKinney’s F5E-2-LO Lightning aircraft after it left the base, the DPAA said, and he never returned from the mission. No evidence of a crash was discovered among his route, and his remains could not be found immediately after the war. McKinney’s name was engraved on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Decades later, new efforts to find his remains began. A wartime report from the Royal Thai Air Force Museum indicated that on the day McKinney disappeared, a plane was struck by lightning, according to the DPAA. The aircraft exploded and crashed in a wooded area in Thailand’s Lampang Province, according to the report. In 2018, third-party researchers found a crash site in a rice paddy in the region that they were able to associate with McKinney’s aircraft. DPAA teams investigated the site in 2019 and 2021. 

A recovery team excavated the site and found possible human remains there in 2022. Those remains were transported to the DPAA laboratory, where “modern forensic techniques” were used to identify them as belonging to McKinney. 

Now that McKinney has been accounted for, his family will receive a briefing from the DPAA. A rosette will be engraved next to his name on the Walls of the Missing. The DPAA will also arrange for him to be laid to rest with full military honors.