News-Info-Alerts

Re: WW II Crash Site Found in Northern Kurils

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: November 19, 2003

"Deerfield Beach private eye finds answers to 1944 U.S. Navy bomber crash

By Susannah Bryan Staff Writer

DEERFIELD BEACH -- Private eye Shirley Ann Casey took on a mystery that had stumped Navy officials and police. But sure enough, it was the tenacious Casey, a gumshoe at 52, who cracked the case.

It would prove to be the case of a lifetime -- a mystery spanning nearly 60 years that began on a snow-covered volcano in Russia, thousands of miles from Casey's home in Deerfield Beach, where she did most of her sleuthing.

Partly because of her efforts, a burial ceremony honoring World War II bomber pilot Lt. Walt Whitman and his crew of six will take place Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Standing in the crowd will be Casey, representing the family of Philadelphia-born Whitman. One cousin on Whitman's paternal side was too ill to travel, and one on his maternal side wished to remain anonymous and had no desire to attend.

"This story touched my heart," said Casey, who has no family in the military but volunteered her services to the Navy two years ago after reading about the military's unsuccessful search for relatives of a World War II pilot.

"We were running up against a brick wall," said Ken Terry, head of the POW/MIA section for Navy Casualty, a division of the Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tenn.

"We could not find relatives of Lt. Walt Whitman. That's where Miss Casey came into play. She put in hundreds of hours unraveling this mystery. She was able to find clue after clue. She was piecing together this massive puzzle trying to run down a lead for a maternal relative. Without that maternal relative, we would not be at this point. We'd still be searching."

Casey leaves today for Arlington to attend the 11 a.m. ceremony Thursday for Whitman and his crew.

Although only three of the men have been identified, the ceremony will honor all seven.

"Just being there is an honor," said Casey. "Such an emotional, overwhelming honor."

Whitman and his crew of six vanished into an icy fog on March 25, 1944, while on a bombing and reconnaissance mission to Japan from Alaska's Aleutian Islands. A team of Russian geologists discovered the crash site in 1962, but the Cold War kept the KGB from alerting U.S. officials.

The fate of the crew was a mystery until three years ago, when Russian officials notified the United States of a missing PV-1 Ventura, a twin-engine patrol bomber that crashed nearly 60 years ago on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia.

The bomber was one of five assigned that cold March night to fly 1,500 miles roundtrip to Shumshu Island in the Northern Kurils on a bombing mission, then head back home. The route, known as the "Empire Express," was flown repeatedly in the final two years of World War II.

Only one plane completed the mission. One crashed on takeoff, and two were forced to turn back. The fifth, carrying Whitman and his crew of six, vanished. Navy officials think Whitman, his engines riddled with gunfire, was trying to reach an emergency landing strip in Soviet territory.

Whitman's crewmates included co-pilot John Hanlon Jr. of Worcester, Mass.; Samuel Crown Jr. of Columbus, Ohio; Clarence Fridley of Manhattan, Mont.; Donald LeWallen of Omaha, Neb.; James Palko of Superior, Wis.; and Jack Junior Parlier of Decatur, Ill.

After excavation of the crash site, DNA comparisons were made of the lost crew and relatives. Both paternal and maternal bloodlines were required for a complete DNA search.

But the Navy, which even sought help from Miami Beach police, ran into trouble hunting down maternal relatives of the pilot, who was 25 at the time of the crash. His personnel file mentioned only an aunt living in Miami Beach.

"I thought, `Let's find her,'" said the spirited Casey, her sharp blue eyes flashing. "People aren't missing to me. They're just relocated."

Casey, a Boston native who has been tracing people for a living since 1990, works as a detective for a financial firm in West Palm Beach. In her spare time she finds missing persons, from crime victims to biological parents to hard-to-find heirs.

The search for Whitman's aunt was frustrating, with one dead end after another. But Casey persevered.

According to her research, Whitman left Philadelphia at age 3 after his parents divorced. He moved with his mother and her new husband to Texas, then to St. Louis as a teenager to live with relatives after his mother's death. With his aunt's help, he entered the University of Cincinnati before joining the Navy for training as a pilot.

The aunt, Frances Williams McClain, married four times and lied about her age, leaving a confusing paper trail, Casey said.

"No one could find her," Casey said. "It took me 11 months. This family had a common name, and there were so many twists and turns. When I found Frances, I knew I'd be home free."

The aunt died in 1977 at age 92, but Casey was able to trace a cousin mentioned in her will. More than 5,200 men shared the cousin's name in one state alone, but knowing his age narrowed the search.

Finally, Casey made a phone call, praying she'd found the cousin of the ill-fated pilot.

"I almost fell out of this chair," she said from her home office, a box marked "Whitman case" at her feet. "I couldn't believe it. I didn't expect to find him for two to three years."

The cousin was willing to provide the Navy with a blood sample but demanded anonymity.

Had it not been for Casey's work tracking down a DNA sample from the maternal bloodline, the DNA investigation would have been inconclusive, said Terry of Navy Casualty.

"The remains might have included Walt Whitman's, and we would have never known."

But they didn't. Only the remains of Fridley, LeWallen and Palko were found in the wreckage.

Because the other four airmen were not found, Navy officials think they may have survived the crash.

Despite the ceremony in Arlington, this case remains open, Terry said. He and his team will continue to research the fate of the other crew members, including Whitman, just as they hope eventually to find the 78,000 World War II soldiers who remain missing.

"When you're in boot camp, they tell you that if you fall in the field and we can't get to you immediately, we will recover your remains and bring you home," said Terry, a retired Marine. "This is an extension of that promise: We will not forget you."

Nor did Whitman's aunt forget her nephew.

In 1945, a year after the crash, she purchased a gravesite for him in Oak Hill, Ohio. It still awaits his remains.

Susannah Bryan can be reached at sbryan@sun-sentinel.com or 954-572- 2028.  

© 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel"