WWII airman’s remains positively identified 80 years after final mission

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By Tessa Robinson

Posted on Nov 17, 2024

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Crew of B-24 Heaven Can Wait. Photo: National Archives — Project Recover is a collaborative effort to enlist 21st-century science and technology in a quest to find and repatriate World War II MIAs to bring recognition to the service member, closure for their families, and to help a grateful Nation keep its sacred promise to bring our MIAs home. As a result of Project Recover’s missions, there are 84 MIAs awaiting recovery at this time (January 2020). Since 1993, Project Recover (formerly The BentProp Project) has located 30+ downed World War II US aircraft associated with scores of MIA service members.
Crew of B-24 Heaven Can Wait. Photo: National Archives — Project Recover is a collaborative effort to enlist 21st-century science and technology in a quest to find and repatriate World War II MIAs to bring recognition to the service member, closure for their families, and to help a grateful Nation keep its sacred promise to bring our MIAs home. As a result of Project Recover’s missions, there are 84 MIAs awaiting recovery at this time (January 2020). Since 1993, Project Recover (formerly The BentProp Project) has located 30+ downed World War II US aircraft associated with scores of MIA service members.

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The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), in partnership with Project Recover and other experts in the field, has announced that they have positively identified the remains of 2nd Lt. Thomas V. Kelly, Jr., who had been Missing In Action since World War II. The 21-year-old from Livermore, CA, served as a bombardier in a B-24 bomber named Heaven Can Wait that was shot down over a remote bay in Papua New Guinea on March 11, 1944. In 2017 the missing bomber was located underwater at a depth of over 200 feet by the nonprofit group Project Recover, leading to a 2023 mission by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to recover crew remains from the wreck site. This was the deepest underwater MIA recovery effort ever undertaken by the U.S. government.

The 11-man crew of Heaven Can Wait was part of the 320th squadron of the “Jolly Rogers” 90th Bombardment Group and was on a mission to bomb Japanese anti-aircraft batteries around Hansa Bay when their B-24 was shot down by enemy fire causing it to crash into the ocean. Present-day Papua New Guinea was the site of military action in the Pacific from January 1942 to the end of the war in August 1945, with significant losses of aircraft and servicemen. 

The wreckage of B-24 “Heaven Can Wait” found by Project Recover Partner, Scripps. Photo: Scripps — Project Recover is a collaborative effort to enlist 21st-century science and technology in a quest to find and repatriate World War II MIAs to bring recognition to the service member, closure for their families, and to help a grateful Nation keep its sacred promise to bring our MIAs home. As a result of Project Recover’s missions, there are 84 MIAs awaiting recovery at this time (January 2020). Since 1993, Project Recover (formerly The BentProp Project) has located 30+ downed World War II US aircraft associated with scores of MIA service members.
The wreckage of B-24 “Heaven Can Wait” found by Project Recover Partner, Scripps. Photo: Scripps — Project Recover is a collaborative effort to enlist 21st-century science and technology in a quest to find and repatriate World War II MIAs to bring recognition to the service member, closure for their families, and to help a grateful Nation keep its sacred promise to bring our MIAs home. As a result of Project Recover’s missions, there are 84 MIAs awaiting recovery at this time (January 2020). Since 1993, Project Recover (formerly The BentProp Project) has located 30+ downed World War II US aircraft associated with scores of MIA service members.

Project Recover set its sights on finding Heaven Can Wait after being presented with four years of research on the circumstances of the crash, compiled by family members of one of the B-24 crew members seeking closure for their lost relative. These data included historical eyewitness narratives from official military reports, mission documents, and diary entries from crew members on other aircraft in formation with the B-24 during its flight. In October 2017, a team from Project Recover performed an archaeological survey of Hansa Bay using scanning sonars, high-definition imagers, advanced diving, and unmanned aerial and underwater robotic technologies. After covering nearly 27 square kilometers of the sea floor over 11 days, Project Recover located the debris field of the B-24 bomber at a depth of 213 feet.  

Project Recover formally communicated details of the crash site to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), and based on that site survey the DPAA sent a Navy diving expedition back to Hansa Bay in 2018 to confirm that the site contained the likely wreck of the Heaven Can Wait bomber. In 2019 DPAA leadership started planning for a mission to recover crew remains from the wreck site. That effort would be delayed by the global COVID-19 pandemic, but in early 2023, the DPAA sent a mission team, including the Navy’s Experimental Diving Unit, to Hansa Bay for a multi-week recovery operation. This was the deepest underwater MIA recovery operation the U.S. government had ever undertaken. 

About Project Recover

Retriving a UAV — Project Recover is a collaborative effort to enlist 21st-century science and technology in a quest to find and repatriate World War II MIAs to bring recognition to the service member, closure for their families, and to help a grateful Nation keep its sacred promise to bring our MIAs home. As a result of Project Recover’s missions, there are 84 MIAs awaiting recovery at this time (January 2020). Since 1993, Project Recover (formerly The BentProp Project) has located 30+ downed World War II US aircraft associated with scores of MIA service members.
Retriving a UAV — Project Recover is a collaborative effort to enlist 21st-century science and technology in a quest to find and repatriate World War II MIAs to bring recognition to the service member, closure for their families, and to help a grateful Nation keep its sacred promise to bring our MIAs home. As a result of Project Recover’s missions, there are 84 MIAs awaiting recovery at this time (January 2020). Since 1993, Project Recover (formerly The BentProp Project) has located 30+ downed World War II US aircraft associated with scores of MIA service members.

Project Recover is a nonprofit, public-private partnership involving the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego to enlist 21st-century science and technology combined with in-depth archival and historical research in a quest to find the final resting places of Americans missing in action since World War II. Project Recover is the only non-governmental organization (NGO) with full vertical capabilities in the POW/MIA recovery space that include operational missions in both underwater and land environments.

Project Recover’s cutting-edge team of scientists, historians, archaeologists, engineers, and divers conduct research and surveys to discover new crash sites, fully document wreckage, and correlate wrecks to known MIA cases. That documentation can then be used by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to evaluate that site for the possible recovery of remains. DPAA is tasked with recovery and repatriation efforts, including notification of the families of these MIAs. 

Project Recover has completed over 100 missions in 24 countries, discovered and documented more than 75 aircraft associated with MIAs, developed a growing database of more than 700 cases associated with more than 3,000 MIAs, accounted for over 80 missing-in-action service members, repatriated 19 American heroes, and anticipate the identification of 26 MIAs by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) by the end of 2025.