80 years after D-Day, a dedicated team works to bring missing airmen home

By Jaide Timm-Garcia and Isabel Rosales, CNN

Minutes before plunging to their deaths, five airmen successfully dropped 14 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne near their landing mark over Normandy, France from their C-47. It was just after 2:44 a.m. on June 6, 1944. The airmen completed their mission but lost their lives.

The remains of the pilot and crew chief were recovered days later but the co-pilot, navigator and radio operator were never found – possibly until now.

Eighty years after the Normandy Invasion known as D-Day, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, operating under the Department of Defense, is looking for the three missing airmen with the hope of finally bringing them home.

They have found what is believed to be the crash site of the downed C-47, along with the possible remains of the co-pilot, 2nd Lieutenant William Donohue; the radio operator, Staff Sergeant David Madson and the navigator, 2nd Lieutenant Albert Brooks. The remaining three airmen from the 304th Troop Carrier Squadron, 442nd Troop Carrier Group, 50th Troop Carrier Wing were never accounted for but never forgotten.

Crew flies mission over France

D-Day was the pivotal moment of the war in Europe to tip the balance in favor of the Allied Forces. Commonly referred to as “the beginning of the end” of World War II, Dr. Eric Klinek, a historian with the agency, said it was the first major attack to move American forces into German-held territory following years of pressure from President Franklin D. Roosevelt to do so.

The 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions led the airborne assault in the earliest stages of Operation Overlord, which included more than 160,000 Allied troops landing along the beaches of Normandy to fight Nazi Germany.

Paratroopers were instrumental in getting behind enemy lines to cut off German supply routes and expand Allied capability to take over terrestrial targets. If they survived their jump, they would fight on the ground as infantrymen for as long as it took to complete the mission.

Their mode of transportation was the C-47, a military version of the civilian DC-3 airplane. Taking off from England at 11 p.m. on June 5 and crossing the English Channel, the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions were to be dropped behind Utah Beach a few hours before the naval invasion, Dr. Klinek said.

On the morning of D-Day, there were 821 C-47s carrying more than 13,000 soldiers from the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions. Eighteen of them were shot down. Due to poor weather, communication interference and unexpected enemy fire, many of the troop drops were scattered. “Some landed in their drop zones and others landed miles away. If a plane got hit, the best option was for the paratroopers to jump wherever they could,” Dr. Klinek said.

Faced with German anti-aircraft fire from an altitude of less than 1,200 feet, Donohue, Madson and Brooks, along with their fellow airmen: the crew chief, Major McKinley McCanless; and the pilot, 1st Lieutenant Samuel Williams Jr., did not have enough time to bail out or maneuver a successful crash landing after dropping their paratroopers.

French eyewitnesses say their C-47 “struck the ground and burst into flames,” killing all five men, according to agency records.

A crash site rediscovered

In 2016, the agency received a tip the crash site had been rediscovered on farmland in Normandy. They sent a team in 2019 to evaluate the site and what they found was “part of an air speed indicator and part of a C-47 load adjuster,” Dr. Klinek said, who was part of the initial evaluation on the ground. “We knew based on all the evidence from the French researchers to all the documents we had that this was the plane,” he said.

Dr. Klinek said the agency only pursues crash sites where missing soldiers could be found, so they launched an excavation site on April 12 with the goal of retrieving every possible piece of wreckage or evidence of human remains.

At the excavation site, a team of 25 people conducted labor-intensive work every day for six weeks straight. Using an excavator and shovels to create dozens of grids, they swept the area for high concentrations of metal, then pressure washed and sifted every square inch of soil capable of containing even the smallest piece of evidence.

“We actually hit the ground running with findings,” Capt. Brian Foxworth, the search team leader, said. From potential life support items such as “parachute buckles, fragments of headsets, and standard issue flashlights that every service member would be issued and carry on their person,” Foxworth explained, to “possible osseous material.”

Osseous material includes anything related to human remains, Foxworth explained. “Whether it’s bone fragment to teeth, anything that you could potentially link to a person that could provide a DNA sample or provide what’s needed to match up dental records, all of those things, that’s what we’re trying to pull back with us to the lab.”

Foxworth and the agency emphasize the word “possible” with everything they find to maintain extreme precision and a cautious respect for families who have waited for decades to learn about the whereabouts of their loved ones’ remains.

Even when excavators are certain about specific items, everything must be sent to an agency lab for proper forensic testing before anything can be verified or concluded.

“Everything is possible,” Master Sergeant Raul Castillo, the team’s life support investigator, said. Holding a shining key-shaped metal object on a cloth next to five small items caked with dirt, Castillo said, “We found this on the surface and it’s in a pretty good state, it’s part of a headset … it’s all possible from aircrew members … we won’t know until we get back.”

Castillo’s role is to identify each object being pulled from the ground, some of which may have been life support equipment assigned to the flight crew or paratroopers on the C-47. He was able to confirm each item uncovered so far had been from the 1940s.

Searching wreckage for a link

The excavation team wrapped up their work at the dig site at the end of May. All uncovered items are being transferred to an agency laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where they will be cataloged and tested by a team of forensic scientists led by Carrie Brown, lab manager and forensic anthropologist.

“A lot of times with these recoveries from Europe … especially if they have been in the ground for 80 years, you’re getting fragments of bone,” Brown said.

She said bones found in Europe are generally well-preserved.

“Non-biological items such as watches, boots, ID tags, jewelry, those types of things, would get an analyst,” Brown said, explaining items such as teeth and skeletal material would be separated, inventoried and assigned to analysts as well.

To test for DNA samples, Brown said a minimum of one gram of dense bone is needed. The results are then compared to a DNA sample from the missing service member’s medical file.

“In order to make that identification, you have to get both sides to match up. If I don’t have any dental records or medical records or a DNA sample – it doesn’t matter how much really great data I can collect from what I have in the lab – I can never match those up,” Brown said.

The agency is responsible for doing background research, getting excavation teams out to the field, and conducting lab analysis. The best quality DNA samples are sent to the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System’s DNA identification lab at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to confirm the identification. Once confirmed, the Army Past Conflict Repatriation Branch connects with family members to collect reference samples to potentially match the DNA.

It can take up to a year and a half from conducting the field recovery to making a positive identification.

Brown described herself and her team as civil servants dedicated to returning their nation’s fallen. Though the processes can be grueling, and each case may have its own obstacles along the way, “You can’t get past that human component,” she said. “You’ve put all these pieces together and now it links up with a person with a story.”

Brown said the first thing guests see when they enter the DPAA lab is the part of the Soldier’s Creed, which says, “I will never leave a fallen comrade.”

“It says everything about us as a nation, it says we are not going to give up. And if you’ve fallen overseas, we are going to keep searching for you no matter what it takes,” she said.

Reconnecting across generations

The families of Donohue, Madson and Brooks have been notified by the agency they are currently looking for their loved ones’ remains, and the process may take time. The agency meets with families of missing service members throughout the year at Family Member Updates to brief relatives about their specific cases and answer any questions people may have about recovery efforts.

Paul Stouffer knows firsthand the impact the agency has on families of fallen soldiers who are searching for answers about their loved ones. He is the nephew of a World War II fighter pilot named Lieutenant William McGowan, who was shot down on D-Day in a P-47 single-engine fighter aircraft. McGowan was only 23 years old when he died, and Stouffer spent his whole life watching his mother and grandparents pursue details about his death, and where his remains could have possibly ended up.

After the war, the American Graves Registration Service located the P-47 crash site but did not find McGowan’s remains at the time. His name was engraved on the Wall of the Missing at the Normandy American cemetery.

In 2009, Stouffer heard about other missing service members being accounted for and reached out to the agency to offer his DNA samples for analysis. In 2018, the agency excavated his uncle’s crash site and recovered human remains, which were identified the following year as McGowan. Stouffer attended his burial service at the American Cemetery in Normandy in 2022 and gave the eulogy for an uncle he had always dreamed about, but never met.

“It was the phone call that I wish my grandparents had got, or even later, I wish my mom had been alive for that moment as well,” Stouffer said. “One of the things that really stuck with me is knowing that after my mother was gone, that he would not be forgotten.”

Stouffer watched during the burial ceremony in Normandy as a rosette was placed on the Wall of the Missing next to McGowan’s name, signifying that he had been found.

If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep

World War II still has 72,000 American soldiers who are unaccounted for, according to the agency. It’s conducting operations year-round in 45 countries, working to recover the remains of fallen U.S. soldiers and uphold the promise of the United States Military to “leave no man behind.”

The agency handles each case of a missing person with dignity and respect for those who gave their lives for their country. They work under strict protocols and protective processes to ensure they get every detail correct, leaving no grain of sand unsifted.

When missing service members are identified, the agency gives family members the option to have the remains buried with full military honors back home, or to receive the same honors in a burial abroad where they died.

Photos of the three missing airmen were stationed at the dig site, providing what the team calls intrinsic motivation along their search.

Foxworth said after 17 years in the Air Force, this was one of his most important missions. He has been on other recovery efforts with the agency, but says this operation hits a little closer to home.

“We sign the dotted line knowing what that means. It may require us sacrificing our own lives. One of the mottoes we have is we’ll never leave an airman behind, so this is us fulfilling that obligation. And it’s an obligation that I’m extremely lucky to be a part of,” Foxworth said.

“No matter how long it takes… we won’t stop. We’ll keep searching.”

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