Remains of World War II soldier from Detroit identified 80 years after plane shot down

DETROIT – The remains of a World War II Detroit soldier, identified 80 years after his plane was shot down in a bombing raid, will be buried in Kansas.

On December 1, 1943, 25-year-old 2nd Lt. John E. McLauchlen Jr. of the U.S. Army Air Forces piloted a B-24J Liberator bomber on a bombing run from Panagarh, India, to the Insein Railroad Yard north of Rangoon, Burma. According to the Accounting Agency for Prisoners of War and Missing Defence SoldiersHis plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and the left wing caught fire.

According to witnesses, his plane went into a steep dive and disappeared behind the clouds. Three enemy aircraft followed the plane into the clouds and he was never heard from again. The remains of the crew were neither recovered nor identified during the war and they were all later declared missing.

In 1947, the American Grave Registration Service (AGRS) recovered the remains of eight people involved in a B-24 Liberator crash near Yodayadet, Burma. Local witnesses reported to AGRS at the time that there were no survivors of the crash, and Japanese forces requested that they bury the remains in two large graves.

The remains recovered from these graves were known as Unidentified Persons X-505A, X-505B, X-505C, X-505D, X-505E, X-505F, X-505G, and X-505H Barrackpore (X-505A-H). They could not be identified at the time and were buried as Unidentified Persons at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), Honolulu, Hawaii, also known as Punchbowl.

In October 2020, after receiving a request from the family for exhumation, the DPAA exhumed the remains from the cemetery and sent them to the DPAA laboratory for analysis. Scientists used anthropological analysis and material evidence in identifying the remains. The Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis.

McLauchlen’s remains have been identified and he was identified by the DPAA on January 25, 2024. McLauchlen’s remains will be interred at Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery in Kansas on July 8. Belden-Larkin Funeral Home will conduct funeral services following the interment.