Using the link below:

http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/WWII_MIA/INDEX.HTM

* As this list will mainly reflect US MARINE WW-II MIA, I will try to include as much information as I can come across. I would prefer to post entries myself...please note: this is a "Work in Progress", so it will take "years" to evolve and correct due to the large numbers of WW-II USMC MIA.

* I regret to say there are some mistakes that may have been made by myself, the lists are old and information of that time often reflected in sometimes hasty, incorrect, or incomplete records of information. Now many years have past- and often the details are not much better.

* If you have information about a particular Marine on the list, please contact me on the Barracks forum *(new post)* with the source, and I will post it as soon as I can. Sometimes I am gone for long periods, so rest easy I will follow up.

* A MIA research site I've used countless times in my WW-II research- and found to be fast and correct everytime is:

++http://www.wfirg.org/


USMC/USN CORSAIR losses outside the boundries of the United States during WW-II, was compiled by:

"Rob Mears"


In honor of:

Capt. SPARKS
PFC. RADER
PFC. SAUTER

- all USMC MIA on 12/23/43: TBF-1 #23871 serving with VMTB-232, lost over Bougainville, South West Pacific.

- TBF Avenger information courtesy of: former Marine Ted Darcy, from web site wfirg.org listed above.

"In his May 25th 2009 Memorial Day speech President Barack Obama declared,"..."the support of our veterans is a sacred trust...we need to serve them as they have served us...that means bringing home all our POWs and MIAs..."

- I hope all the Marines posted here will someday be found and brought back home.

Regards & Semper Fi-

Shaneo

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SAUTER, WILLIAM R 522000 USMC PFC 12/23/1943

RADER, CALVIN NORMAN 395221 USMC PFC 12/23/1943

SPARKS, THEO LEE 16515 USMC CAPT 12/23/1943

If I may;

There is the below one,still listed on the site, but that has been recovered.

MCCOWN, MARION R JR 9610 USMCR MAJ 01/16/1946

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 1025-08
December 19, 2008
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marine Pilot Missing In Action From WWII Is Identified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

He is Maj. Marion R. McCown Jr., U.S. Marine Corps, of Charleston, S.C. He will be buried on Jan. 18 in Charleston.

Representatives from the Marine Corps Mortuary Office met with McCown’s next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the Secretary Of The Navy.

On Jan. 20, 1944 McCown was the pilot of an F-4U Corsair aircraft that failed to return from a combat mission over Rabaul, New Britain, Papua New Guinea.

In 1991, a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) team excavated an F-4U crash site in Rabaul and recovered human remains and McCown’s identification tag. However, forensic science at that time precluded an identification.

In 2006, a JPAC team surveyed the crash site in preparation for a recovery. While at the site, a villager living in the area turned over to the team human remains that he claimed to have recovered from the site. In 2008, another JPAC team excavated the site and recovered additional human remains.

Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC used dental comparisons in the identification of McCown’s remains.

Welcome home Maj.

BoatBM1

Thanks for the post Boats, and welcome home Major McCown- our Nation thanks you for your service...

RIP always

SAHL, BERNARD EARL 21330 USMCR 1 LT 12/25/1943


MIA

F4U-1D(?) #57464 VMF-223: mission Rabaul, SW.Pac.

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YARBROUGH, MASON O 309064 USMC CPL *


* Date of Loss not available

MIA

FELTS, JOHN THOMAS JR 26187 USMCR 2 LT 12/27/1943


MIA

HAGEMEIER, RAYMOND D 337862 USMC PVT 12/27/1942


MIA

KAMPS, JOHN 21208 USMCR 1 LT 12/27/1943


MIA

F4U-1A #17845 VMF-216:Torokina (to?) SW.Pac.

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KNOTTS, REYNOLDS HILL 10611 USMCR CAPT 12/27/1943


MIA

MCCAY, LOUIS WHITE 259806 USMC MTSGT 12/27/1943


MIA

DUIGNAN, JAMES G 450996 USMCR SGT 12/27/1943


MIA

BARTL, HARRY ROBERT O18730 USMCR 1 LT 12/28/1943


MIA

F4U-1A #56420 VMF-214: mission Rabaul, SW.Pac.

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DUSTIN, J CAMERON 9027 USMCR CAPT 12/28/1943


MIA

F4U-1A #17908 VMF-214: mission Rabaul, SW.Pac.

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More news on/about Major MCCOWN, from an earlier post above:

Remains Of WWII Marine Identified
By Associated Press Writer Seanna Adcox
© MMVIII The Associated Press.

COLUMBIA, S.C., Dec. 20, 2008

(AP) The burial next month of Maj. Marion Ryan McCown Jr. in a family plot in Charleston, nearly 65 years after his plane went down in the South Pacific, brings relief and joy to a family who never thought his remains would be found, his relatives said Friday.

The Marine pilot had been missing since Jan. 20, 1944, when his single-seat F-4U Corsair failed to return from a combat mission over the island of New Britain, in Papua New Guinea. His remains were recovered from a crash site in the town of Rabaul, where the Japanese had a base, and identified earlier this year, the Defense Department's POW/Missing Personnel Office announced Friday.

"It's such a comfort. All of us just assumed he was lost at sea and would never be found, and it was going to be an unanswered question," said Jane McKinney, of Channel Islands, Calif., who was three months old when her half-brother went missing.

McCown was 27 when, on a bomber escort, his squadron tangled with 40 Japanese Zero fighter planes, said his nephew, Capt. John Almeida, a retired Navy doctor in Jacksonville, N.C.

Almeida has the flight log the Marine Corps sent his mother in the 1950s.

"It must've been a heckofa fight. His squadron lost three pilots out of 11," he said.

As for finding his uncle, "I'd given up years ago," said Almeida, 63, who was a Marine in Vietnam before serving 24 years in the Navy Medical Corps.

McCown, who left Georgia Tech for the Marines in 1942, will be buried with military honors Jan. 18 - four days after he would have turned 92 - beside his mother, sister, and grandparents at The Unitarian Church cemetery in Charleston.

Family members say the service will be a joyous occasion that will bring together relatives who are scattered across the country.

"It's going to be a fantastic trip," Almeida said. "It's opened up a whole new world I didn't know about."

That includes meeting Helen Schiller, 87, of Summerville, who was McCown's girlfriend.

"He wanted the Marines, and he wanted to fly," Schiller said.

She recalled him taking her to dinner in his dress whites whenever he came home from training in Cherry Point, N.C. She still has a box with wings he sent her before he vanished.

"Boy, I'll tell you, he was a sharp one. He was the perfect gentleman, like the old Charlestonians. He was really, really a nice fella," said the former Helen Miller of Charleston. On his identification, she added, "It was the biggest surprise in the world. Nobody knew what had happened to him."

Unbeknownst to the family, a POW/MIA team recovered McCown's identification tag and bone fragments from the South Pacific crash site in 1991, but forensic science could not identify the remains then. In 2006, when a team returned to prepare the site for recovery, a partial parachute was found, and a local villager handed over remains he said he took from the site. More remains and the wreckage were recovered last spring. Dental comparisons and other forensic and circumstantial evidence led to the identification, the Defense Department said.

Not wanting to make mistakes, the military won't identify remains based on "dog tags, because anything can happen in war," Almeida said.

In May, as remains were unearthed, McKinney and her family were vacationing in the South Pacific. Thinking French Polynesia, more than 4,000 miles from the site, was the closest she'd ever get to her brother, McKinney tossed flowers into the ocean.

It wasn't until August, when an Internet search by a McKinney friend turned up information on the excavation, that the family connected with the military. Because of his military background, Almeida was asked to make the call. "We've been looking for you," he recalled the head of the POW/MIA office saying.

"It was very exciting. We kinda felt like the sadness was long over," McKinney said. She's thankful "there are people who have just not given up finding these remains.

"We knew we weren't going to get him back. But it's been such a comfort and such a mark of respect for him and his sacrifice."

But one thing still haunts family members, said McCown's 41-year-old niece Blair McKinney. While they're grateful and understand the military can't make a conclusive identification with dog tags, they don't like to think of the 1991 find.

"The only heart-wrenching part of it as the family ... is that his two other siblings were alive in the '90s and went to their graves not knowing anything," Blair McKinney said.

The Raleigh, N.C., resident is reading her uncle's five-year diary now. She's touched by his last entry, written in 1942, when he was stationed in Quantico, Va.

"What a beautiful place," he wrote. "I might want to settle here when the war is over."

ALLEN, MATTHEW O21609 USMC 1 LT 12/29/1943


MIA

F4U-1A #17737 VMF-216:Torokina to Empress Augusta Bay, Bougainville (located in PNG) SW.Pac.

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WHITTLESEY, FRANK R 372015 USMC PVT *

Date of Loss unavailable

MIA

CAMPION, THOMAS JAMES O25494 USMCR 1 LT 12/30/1944


MIA