Remains of Bomber Pilot Identified 80 Years After His Plane Went Down During World War II

In the spring of 1944, Herbert G. Tennyson was piloting an American bomber with ten other crew members when the aircraft crashed into the water off Papua New Guinea. Searchers didn’t find the plane’s wreckage or any survivors.

Now, more than 80 years later, Tennyson has been officially identified and accounted for, according to an announcement from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).

Tennyson, who was from Wichita, Kansas, was a 24-year-old first lieutenant in the United States Army when he was killed during World War II.

On March 11, 1944, Tennyson and his fellow crew members were flying a B-24D nicknamed “Heaven Can Wait” near Awar Point in Hansa Bay, located along the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. As the plane approached Awar Point, its bomb bay burst into flames. The blaze then spread to the tail section.

“Observers saw one crew member bail out of the plane, but he appeared to be wearing no parachute, and two others were seen to bail out wearing parachutes that did not deploy,” according to the DPAA. “The plane banked left and dove into the water off of Awar Point.”

It’s not entirely clear what happened, but the agency suspects Japanese troops fired on the plane, which caused one of the onboard weapons to detonate.

Nearby aircraft soared overhead to look for the wreckage and any survivors. But their attempts were unsuccessful. All 11 crew members were presumed dead.

After the war, the American Graves Registration Service returned to Hansa Bay to search for Tennyson and the crew. But in late 1948, the service stopped searching.

Then, in 2013, relatives of the plane’s bombardier, Thomas V. Kelly Jr., started doing some research. They contacted Project Recover, a citizen-led nonprofit that searches for, recovers and repatriates the remains of American service members who are missing in action.

The group’s leaders had already been planning to search for American military wreckage around Papua New Guinea. But with the research provided by Kelly’s relatives, they decided to prioritize Hansa Bay.

Volunteers spent nearly two weeks searching the seafloor using underwater robots and sonar scans. In 2018, they found “Heaven Can Wait” submerged 213 feet deep near Awar Point.

“It’s very humbling to be able to take the technologies and skills that have been developed over time, and bringing those together in a way that serve people,” said Eric Terrill, the co-founder of Project Recover and a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Megan Cassidy in 2018. “The families themselves have had a lot of sacrifices, and some of those losses are still felt today.”

In 2019, the DPAA sent an underwater team to survey the site and remove unexploded ordnances. Four years later, experts excavated the wreckage and recovered life support equipment, identification tags, artifacts and possible human remains.

They sent the items to the DPAA’s laboratory for further study. Using dental and mitochondrial DNA analysis, scientists there were able to identify Tennyson’s remains.

Tennyson will be buried in Wichita, and a rosette will be added to his name on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial to indicate that he has been accounted for.

Many members of the “Heaven Can Wait” crew are still missing, though the agency has accounted for at least three other men: Eugene J. Darrigan, a staff sergeant and the plane’s radio operator; Donald W. Sheppick, a second lieutenant and the plane’s navigator; and Kelly, the bombardier.