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

DETROIT – The remains of a World War II soldier from Detroit that were identified 80 years after his plane was shot down on a bombing mission will be laid to rest in Kansas.

On Dec. 1, 1943, U.S. Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. John E. McLauchlen Jr., 25, was piloting a B-24J Liberator bomber on a bombing mission from Panagarh, India, to the Insein Railroad Yard north of Rangoon, Burma. According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, his plane was struck by anti-aircraft fire and the left wing burst into flames.

Witnesses said his aircraft entered a steep dive and vanished below the clouds. Three enemy aircraft followed the plane into the clouds and he was not heard from again. The remains of the crew were not recovered or identified during the war and they were all later declared missing in action.

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 told AGRS at the time that there were no survivors from the crash and Japanese forces told them to bury the remains in two large graves.

The remains recovered from those graves were known as Unknowns X-505A, X-505B, X-505C, X-505D, X-505E, X-505F, X-505G, and X-505H Barrackpore (X-505A-H). They were unable to be identified at the time and were interred as unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (NMCP), Honolulu, Hawaii, also known as the Punchbowl.

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

McLauchlen’s remains were identified and he was accounted for by the DPAA on Jan. 25, 2024. McLauchlen’s remains will be interred on July 8 at the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery in Kansas. The Belden-Larkin Funeral Home will perform graveside services following the interment.