F.E. WARREN AIR FORCE BASE, Wyo. -- On March 11, 1944, 11 Airmen boarded the ‘Heaven Can Wait’, a B-24 Liberator assigned to the 90th Bombardment Group’s 320th Bomber Squadron.
Those Airmen were 1st Lieutenant Herbert Tennyson, 2nd Lieutenants Donald Sheppick, Michael McFadde and Thomas Kelly, Tech Sgt. Edward Gorvetzian and Staff SSgts Donald Burd, Eugene Darrigan, John Emmer, Walter Graves, Paul Martin and Eugene Reinhart.
They flew from Nadzab, New Guinea on a bombing mission against enemy installations at Boram Airfield and Awar Point in Hansa Bay when their aircraft went down, according to Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency records.
Further reports state that eyewitnesses from other aircraft within the formation saw flames erupting from the ‘Heaven Can Wait’ bomb bay before the aircraft made a series of erratic maneuverers before crashing into the water. The DPAA report says it is believed anti-aircraft fire hit the plane and caused its own explosives to erupt.
Years later, in 2013, family members of 2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly, the bombardier, did a deep dive into the history of the ‘Heaven Can Wait’ and its tragic last mission.
“Back in 2013 I decided to spend a few hours on Memorial Day to do what that day is for – remembering Americans who have fallen in past wars,” said Scott Althaus, distant relative of 2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly. “I knew I had two relatives who died in World War II, and that one was missing in action, but I only learned their names the day before I started searching.”
The more research Althaus completed, the more interest the rest of his family began to take in the search.
“I found details on both of them, but when my mother and cousins started expressing interest and then enthusiasm at the answers I was starting to find about my MIA relative's final mission, that's what started the ball rolling toward what would become a multi-year international research effort to uncover what could be learned about the crew's final mission,” said Althaus.
The family’s dedication to research paid off exponentially. After four years dedicated to uncovering the story of 2nd Lt. Kelly, they accumulated enough compelling evidence to determine where the aircrew may have crashed. With this evidence, Althaus reached out to the nonprofit organization, Project Recover.
According to a news release from Project Recover, the nonprofit group located the bomber at an underwater depth of 213 ft. in 2017. Their discovery prompted a 2023 mission by the DPAA to recover crew remains. The effort was the deepest underwater MIA recovery mission ever performed by the United States.
“The discovery was very exciting because we were almost out of time,” said Pat Cannon, Project Recover founder. “In the eleventh and a half hour they found the first signal by site scanning sonar, then they put the remote operating vehicle down and there it was.”
Cannon described the incredible joy felt for not only a successful mission but that there was hope they would finally be able to return these Airmen to their families and homes.
When the aircraft discovery was made public in May 2018, family members of the aircrew began to connect with one another, and many were able to meet in October 2018 for a “crew family reunion.” Together they celebrated and honored the life and service of their war heroes.
“So much has happened since then in our journey, but what really transformed my whole outlook was hearing those stories of loss and closure. These were living relatives of fewer than a dozen MIAs, and yet our country still has over 81,000 MIAs still to be accounted for,” said Althaus. “The scale of that pain and what it meant for so many Americans to finally have some closure is what led me to join Project Recover as a volunteer in 2019, so I could be part of the process of bringing to other families what Project Recover brought to mine.”
In Sept. 2024, four members of the crew were identified. The families of these service members have waited for decades to bring their loved one’s home and now, 81 years later, they are able to bring them back to the resting place they so courageously earned.
“It has been deeply moving to see how much our military cares about its members, no member is forgotten even 80 years later,” said Tess Crick, 1st Lt. Tennysons great niece. “For us as a family, it has been a homecoming for all of us, to be reunited and share this moment.
Staff Sgt. Eugene Darrigan, the aircrafts radio operator, was buried on May 24 at the Church of St. Mary in his hometown of Wappingers Falls, New York.
2nd Lt. Thomas Kelly was buried on May 25 at St. Michael Catholic Cemetery in Livermore, California.
1st Lt. Herbert Tennyson, the aircrafts pilot, was buried on June 27 at Old Mission Cemetery in Wichita, Kansas.
2nd Lt. Donald Sheppick, navigator, is set to be buried on an undetermined date at Howe Cemetery, Pennsylvania.
As the anniversary of some of the Airmen’s recovery approaches, families of the remaining Airmen and those involved in the recovery efforts have not lost hope that they will be able return the entire crew to their homeland.