A World War II pilot who vanished while flying a covert reconnaissance mission has now been accounted for, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Wednesday.
According to officials, U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Franklin H. McKinney, a 21-year-old from Rhode Island, was accounted for on May 15, 2026. McKinney served with the 35th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, part of the 14th Air Force.
McKinney failed to return from a mission after taking off from Yunnanyi, China, to photograph targets in Thailand and Burma, officials said.
The U.S. Air Force has said the squadron conducted high-risk aerial intelligence operations, sending aircraft deep into Japanese-held areas of China, Burma and Thailand to collect information critical to the Allied war effort.
A portrait of U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Franklin H. McKinney, who disappeared during a World War II reconnaissance mission in 1944 and was accounted for in 2026. (DPAA)
On Nov. 5, 1944, McKinney left Yunnanyi at the controls of an F-5 Lightning, a reconnaissance version of the P-38 fighter.
Known as the “Redhawks,” McKinney’s unit provided aerial mapping and intelligence on Japanese troop movements, work the Air Force has credited with helping “turn the tide of the war in China.”
But shortly after he took off, the airbase lost contact with his aircraft.
Despite searches along his flight path to the China-Thailand border by personnel with the American Graves Registration Service, no evidence of a crash was found.
His remains were not accounted for after the war.
ALSO READ: Trump Aide Natalie Harp’s Estranged Brother Reveals Family Feud and Tragedy Behind Their Rift
A Lockheed F-5A Lightning reconnaissance aircraft, part of the F-5 Lightning family, is photographed in 1943. (Corbis via Getty Images)
Around the same time, local officials in Thailand discovered what appeared to be the wreckage of an aircraft that had been struck by lightning in a wooded area, according to DPAA.
Citing a wartime report from the Royal Thai Air Force Museum, the agency said the aircraft exploded before crashing near Ban Mae Kua in the Sop Prap district of Lampang province.
In 2018, third-party researchers located a crash site in a rice paddy of Lampang province and linked it to McKinney’s aircraft.
DPAA investigators then examined the site in 2019 and again in 2021 before a recovery team excavated the area in 2022, recovering possible human remains.
The remains were sent to a DPAA laboratory, where scientists used modern forensic techniques to identify McKinney.
A WWII F-5 Lightning aircraft was discovered in a rice paddy field in Thailand. (Chaiwat Subprasom/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Officials said McKinney’s family will be briefed on the findings.
His name will also be memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
