NEW ORLEANS ( WGNO ) — Less than two weeks after D-Day in 1944, two American B-24 bombers crashed into each other over the Baltic Sea.
The bombers were flying in tight formation when the propeller of one plane clipped the tail of the other. As both planes spun out of control, some of the airmen were able to parachute out, drifting into the water off the coast of Denmark.
The co-pilot of one of the bombers, Lt. Oscar Boudreaux, was picked up by Danish fishermen, only to be spotted by a German patrol boat. He spent the next ten months as a POW.
When the war ended, Boudreaux returned to his family’s home in Napoleonville and moved on with his life. But his family says he always felt that his chapter in WWII was not completely closed. The wreckage of the two planes that crashed–carrying his fellow airmen– was never found.
Fast forward to 2019, when recreational divers discovered an area in the Baltic where there appeared to be pieces of a plane. The Danish and American navies were alerted, along with Trident Archeologie, a private company in the Netherlands, to explore the wreckage.
Now, based on what’s been found, the Army Service Casualty Office, which is a branch of the Defense Department’s POW-MIA Accounting Agency (DPPA), is notifying relatives of at least one of the airmen who went down with Lt. Boudreaux’s plane, that his remains may have been found.
The airman was Staff Sgt. John Danneker, 18-years-old, of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He was a gunner on the plane.
To make a positive identification, the DPPA collects DNA samples from family members to compare with DNA that is collected from a deceased servicemember’s remains.
If the samples are a match, the family can ask the DPPA to leave the remains where they are, or send the remains home for a private burial, or bury the remains in a Defense Department cemetery. It is all done without any charge to the family.
Greg Gardner, Branch Chief of the Army Service Casualty Office, says, “We owe these families — we owe them answers.”
The Defense Department has been searching for the remains of those who served in Vietnam and Korea for years, but didn’t begin the search for WWII remains until 2012, when Congress commissioned it.
Gardner says there are believed to be between 65 -70,000 unaccounted for servicemembers from WWII.
They are not forgotten.
“I spent 28 years in the Army on active duty,” says Gardner, “[and] I can certainly say this is the most honorable and important mission that I ever did.”
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