More than 80 years after he took off from an airfield in China, a US Army Air Force pilot is going home. The remains of 1st Lt. Franklin McKinney have been recovered from a rice paddy in northern Thailand and confirmed as his.

Discovery and Identification

The discovery of McKinney’s remains was made possible by the efforts of a US Air Force Academy cadet, a Thai air force officer, and an American expat. The search for McKinney’s remains began in earnest in 2022, when nine specialists from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) arrived at the crash site to begin excavations.

McKinney was declared dead in March 1946, but no crash site had been identified, and no remains had been found. However, the US military maintains a “sacred promise to leave no-one behind” – even decades later.

McKinney’s Story

McKinney was a pilot with the 35th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, flying an F-5E, the reconnaissance version of the P-38 Lightning fighter. He took off from Beitan Airfield in Yunnan, China, on November 5, 1944, on a mission to photograph Japanese positions in northern Thailand and Burma.

McKinney’s plane was hit by a midair lightning strike, and he crashed in a forest in northern Thailand. The crash site was later excavated for rice cultivation, but the landowner had continued to find pieces of wreckage for years.

McKinney’s remains were finally identified in March, and a repatriation ceremony was held at the US Embassy in Bangkok. His name will be removed from the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Original reporting: KEYT (Ventura/Santa Barbara) — read the source article.