WWII Pilot Franklin H. McKinney Accounted For 80 Years After 1944 Thailand Crash
Updated
Updated · Fox News · Jul 2
WWII Pilot Franklin H. McKinney Accounted For 80 Years After 1944 Thailand Crash
3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Jul 2
Summary
1st Lt. Franklin H. McKinney, a 21-year-old U.S. Army Air Forces pilot from Rhode Island, was officially accounted for on May 15, 2026 after vanishing on a Nov. 5, 1944 reconnaissance mission.
DPAA linked him to an F-5 Lightning that disappeared after departing Yunnanyi, China, to photograph targets in Thailand and Burma, with wartime Thai records placing the crash near Ban Mae Kua in Lampang Province.
Third-party researchers found the site in 2018, DPAA examined it in 2019 and 2021, and a 2022 excavation recovered possible human remains from a rice paddy.
Modern forensic analysis later identified McKinney, whose family will be briefed and whose name will be memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery.