A pilot of the Second World War who we remember to have helped his military colleagues survived the plane crash that killed him was recorded, military officials said this week.
The Air Force Army of the 1st lieutenant Charles W. McCook, 23 said in a press release. Before joining the army, McCook graduated from the Southwestern University and came from a family of pilots, according to local newspaper cuts gathered by the DPAA.
McCook, nicknamed “Woody”, served in China and Burma, according to newspaper cuts. He was one of the 20 officers and enlisted men credited for a mission which was posted in the air to the Allied forces fighting against Japanese troops in northern Burma. During its service, McCook received the air medal and the distinguished Flying Cross, according to press clippings.
On August 3, 1943, McCook was the B-25C “Mitchell” armor gunner, leading a bombing at low altitude on Meiktila, Burma, said DPAA. The raid was intended to target the Meiktila dam and the Japanese barracks nearby, according to a newspaper cut.
POW / MIA Defense accounting agency
The plane crashed during the mission. McCook and three others aboard the plane is dead, but two men survived. One of the survivors, identified in newspaper cuts like the SGT. John Boyd, said the plane had been struck by an explosive gas shell as it was flying at low altitude. McCook, which Boyd recalled “as the best of the company”, was able to bring the damaged plane to an altitude which allowed Boyd and the other surviving soldier of parachute of the machine before he crashed.
Boyd said this action allowed him to survive. He and the other soldier were taken captive by Japanese forces, said the DPAA. Boyd spent two years as a prisoner in Rangoon before being released, according to newspaper cuts.
The remains of McCook have not been recovered. He was finally listed as disappeared in action. In 1947, after the end of the Second World War, the American Severe Recording Service recovered four sets of remains of a common tomb near a village of Burma, DPAA said.
POW / MIA Defense accounting agency
The inhabitants said that the four sets of remains, designated X-282A-D, came from an “American crash,” said the DPAA. But the remains were not identified at the time. They were buried as “unknowns” in the national cemetery of the Pacific Memorial, or in Punchbowl, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The name of McCook was listed on the walls of the missing in the cemetery and commemorative of Manila American in the Philippines.
In January 2022, the DPAA disinterested the four sets of remains and taken at the agency laboratory. Dental, anthropological and isotopic analyzes have been carried out. Other military agencies have used mitochondrial DNA analysis and genome sequencing data to help identify the remains. The processes have enabled the DPAA to identify one of the remains belonging to McCook.
Now that McCook has been explained, a rosette has been placed next to her name on the walls of the missing. He will be buried in his hometown in August 2025, said the DPAA.