WWII pilot credited with saving airman's life is finally accounted for
A World War II pilot who was remembered for helping fellow servicemembers survive the plane crash that killed him has been accounted for, military officials said this week.
Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Charles W. McCook, 23, of Georgetown, Texas, was a member of the 22nd Bombardment Squadron (Medium), 341st Bombardment Group (Medium), 10th Air Force during World War II, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said in a news release. Before joining the military, McCook had graduated from Southwestern University and came from a family of pilots, according to local newspaper clippings gathered by the DPAA.
McCook, nicknamed "Woody," served in China and Burma, according to newspaper clippings. He was one of 20 officers and enlisted men credited for a mission that air-dropped supplies to Allied forces battling Japanese troops in northern Burma. During his service, McCook received the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross, according to newspaper clippings.
On August 3, 1943, McCook was the armor-gunner on the B-25C "Mitchell," conducting a low-altitude bombing raid over Meiktila, Burma, the DPAA said. The raid was meant to target the Meiktila dam and nearby Japanese barracks, according to a newspaper clipping.
The aircraft crashed during the mission. McCook and three others aboard the plane died, but two men survived. One of the survivors, identified in newspaper clippings as Sgt. John Boyd, said the plane had been hit by an explosive gas shell while flying at a low altitude. McCook, who Boyd recalled "as the best in the business," was able to bring the damaged plane up to an altitude that allowed Boyd and the other surviving soldier to parachute from the craft before it crashed.
Boyd said this action allowed him to survive. He and the other soldier were taken captive by Japanese forces, the DPAA said. Boyd spent two years as a prisoner in Rangoon before he was freed, according to newspaper clippings.
McCook's remains were not recovered. He was eventually listed as missing in action. In 1947, after World War II ended, the American Grave Registration Service recovered four sets of remains from a common grave near a village in Burma, the DPAA said.
Locals said the four sets of remains, designated X-282A-D, were from an "American crash," the DPAA said. But the remains were not identified at the time. They were interred as "Unknowns" at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, or the Punchbowl, in Honolulu, Hawaii. McCook's name was listed on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial in the Philippines.
In January 2022, the DPAA disinterred all four sets of remains and taken to the agency's laboratory. Dental, anthropological and isotope analyses were conducted. Other military agencies used mitochondrial DNA analysis and genome sequencing data to help identify the remains. The processes allowed the DPAA to identify one of the sets of remains as belonging to McCook.
Now that McCook has been accounted for, a rosette has been placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing. He will be buried in his hometown in August 2025, the DPAA said.
Sneak peek: Where is Jermain Charlo?
Baldwin grills McMahon on unallocated funds for students, schools, approved by Congress
Hegseth orders Navy to rename USNS Harvey Milk, Jeffries calls it "a complete and total disgrace"
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
11 hours ago
- Boston Globe
With Supreme Court ruling, another check on Trump's power fades
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The ability of district courts to swiftly block Trump administration actions from being enforced in the first place has acted as a rare effective check on his second-term presidency. But generally, the pace of the judicial process is slow and has struggled to keep up. Actions that took place by the time a court rules them illegal, like shutting down an agency or sending migrants to a foreign prison without due process, can be difficult to unwind. Advertisement Presidential power historically goes through ebbs and flows, with fundamental implications for the functioning of the system of checks and balances that defines American-style democracy. Advertisement But it has generally been on an upward path since the middle of the 20th century. The growth of the administrative state inside the executive branch, and the large standing armies left in place as World War II segued into the Cold War, inaugurated what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. coined the 'imperial presidency.' Presidential power waned in the 1970s, in the period encompassing the Watergate scandal and the end of the Vietnam War. Courts proved willing to rule against the presidency, as when the Supreme Court forced President Richard Nixon to turn over his Oval Office tapes. Members of both parties worked together to enact laws imposing new or restored limits on the exercise of executive power. But the present era is very different. Presidential power began to grow again in the Reagan era and after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And now Trump, rejecting norms of self-restraint, has pushed to eliminate checks on his authority and stamp out pockets of independence within the government while only rarely encountering resistance from a Supreme Court he reshaped and a Congress controlled by a party in his thrall. The decision by the Supreme Court's conservative majority comes as other constraints on Trump's power have also eroded. The administration has steamrolled internal executive branch checks, including firing inspectors general and sidelining the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which traditionally set guardrails for proposed policies and executive orders. And Congress, under the control of Trump's fellow Republicans, has done little to defend its constitutional role against his encroachments. This includes unilaterally dismantling agencies Congress had said shall exist as a matter of law, firing civil servants in defiance of statutory limits, and refusing to spend funds that lawmakers had authorized and appropriated. Advertisement Last week, when Trump unilaterally bombed Iranian nuclear sites without getting prior authorization from Congress or making any claim of an imminent threat, one Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, stepped forward to call the move unconstitutional since Congress has the power to declare war. Trump reacted ferociously, declaring that he would back a primary challenger to end Massie's political career, a clear warning shot to any other Republican considering objecting to his actions. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, recently told her constituents that 'we are all afraid' of Trump. While the immediate beneficiary of the Supreme Court's ruling is Trump, the decision also promises to free his successors from what has been a growing trend of district court intervention into presidential policymaking. In the citizenship case, the justices stripped district court judges of the authority to issue so-called universal injunctions, a tool that lower courts have used to block government actions they deem most likely illegal from taking effect nationwide as legal challenges to them play out. The frequency of such orders has sharply increased in recent years, bedeviling presidents of both parties. Going forward, the justices said, lower courts may only grant injunctive relief to the specific plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits. That means the Trump administration may start enforcing the president's birthright citizenship order in the 28 states that have not challenged it, unless individual parents have the wherewithal and gumption to bring their own lawsuits. The full scope of the ruling remains to be seen given that it will not take effect for 30 days. It is possible that plaintiffs and lower-court judges will expand the use of class-action lawsuits as a different path to orders with a nationwide effect. Such an option, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion, would be proper so long as they obey procedural limits for class-action cases. Advertisement Still, in concurring opinions, two other key members of the conservative bloc, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, warned lower-court judges not to lower standards for using alternative means to issue sweeping orders in an effort to circumvent the ruling. Alito wrote that 'district courts should not view today's decision as an invitation to certify nationwide classes without scrupulous adherence to the rigors' of legal rules. Thomas added that if judges do not 'carefully heed this court's guidance' and act within limits, 'this court will continue to be 'duty bound' to intervene.' In a rare move that signaled unusually intense opposition, Justice Sonia Sotomayor read aloud a summary of her dissenting opinion from the bench Friday. Calling the ruling a grave attack on the American system of law, she said it endangered constitutional rights for everyone who is not a party to lawsuits defending them. 'Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship,' she wrote. 'Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship. The majority holds that, absent cumbersome class-action litigation, courts cannot completely enjoin even such plainly unlawful policies unless doing so is necessary to afford the formal parties complete relief.' Sotomayor also said the administration did not ask to entirely halt the multiple injunctions against its order because it knew the directive was patently illegal, and accused the majority of playing along with that open gamesmanship. She, like the other two justices who joined her dissent, is a Democratic appointee. Advertisement All six of the justices who voted to end universal injunctions were Republican appointees, including three Trump installed on the bench in his first term. The same supermajority has ruled in ways that have enhanced his power in other avenues. Last year, the bloc granted Trump presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for his official acts as president. The ruling, by Chief Justice John Roberts, asserted that presidents have absolute immunity for anything they do with the Justice Department and their supervision of federal law enforcement power. Emboldened, Trump this year has built on his approach from his first term, when he informally pressured prosecutors to investigate his political foes. He has issued formal orders to scrutinize specific people he does not like, shattering the post-Watergate norm of a Justice Department case independent from White House political control. The supermajority also has blessed Trump's gambit in firing Democratic members of independent agency commissions before their terms were up. The conservative justices have made clear that they are prepared to overturn a long-standing precedent allowing Congress to establish specialized agencies to be run by panels whose members cannot be arbitrarily fired by presidents. In a separate concurrence, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson offered a realpolitik take. The majority's exegesis of what powers Congress understood itself to be granting lower courts when it created them in 1789 was a smokescreen of mind-numbing 'legalese,' she wrote, obscuring the question of whether a court can order the executive branch to follow the law. 'In a constitutional republic such as ours, a federal court has the power to order the executive to follow the law — and it must,' she wrote before striking a cautionary note. Advertisement 'Everyone, from the president on down, is bound by law,' she added. 'By duty and nature, federal courts say what the law is (if there is a genuine dispute), and require those who are subject to the law to conform their behavior to what the law requires. This is the essence of the rule of law.' But Barrett accused her of forgetting that courts, too, must obey legal limits. 'Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary,' Barrett wrote. 'No one disputes that the executive has a duty to follow the law. But the judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation — in fact, sometimes the law prohibits the judiciary from doing so.' This article originally appeared in
UPI
12 hours ago
- UPI
Thousands attend Iranian state funerals for victims of Iran-Israel conflict
Funeral processions got underway in Tehran Saturday, for around 60 of the roughly 600 total people killed in the 12-day conflict between Iran and Israel. Photo by Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA-EFE June 28 (UPI) -- Funeral processions got underway in Tehran Saturday, for around 60 people killed in the 12-day conflict between Iran and Israel. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian thanked the hundreds of thousands of mourners who attended the funerals for those killed, which included high-ranking military officers and nuclear scientists in addition to civilians. "From the bottom of my heart, I thank you dear people; With love, you bid farewell to the martyrs of our homeland, and our voice of unity reached the ears of the world," Pezeshkian said on X, in a post translated to English. از صمیم قلب از شما مردم عزیز سپاسگزارم؛ با عشق، شهدای وطن را بدرقه کردید و صدای وحدتمان به گوش جهان رسید. ما از حسین بن علی(ع) آموختهایم تن به ذلت ندهیم و در برابر ظلم، سر خم نکنیم. خدمت به چنین ملت آزادهای، افتخار زندگی من است. تا همیشه ایران Masoud Pezeshkian (@drpezeshkian) June 28, 2025 "Serving such a noble nation is the honor of my life," he wrote. "Forever Iran." The post was accompanied by photos of people waving flags and banners lining the streets of the Iranian capital for the state funerals. Chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" could also be heard among the crowd. The event was also broadcast on Iranian state television. Pezeshkian marched in the funeral procession. The Iranian president and state-run Islamic Republic News Agency referred to those killed as "martyrs." The IRNA also said around 90 military members and more than 10 leading scientists were among the around 600 people killed in the Israeli attacks. There was no mention during Saturday's funeral proceedings by local media of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei earlier in the week declared "victory" over the United States, following the American bombardment of three Iranian nuclear facilities. The airstrikes carried out by the U.S. Air Force' B-2 Spirit bombers came following 12 days of various attacks on elements of Iran's military by the Israel Defense Forces. Khamenei told state media the American bombing "achieved nothing." However, on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi admitted the country's nuclear facilities "have been seriously damaged." Araghchi attended the funerals Saturday, calling the deaths "hard and painful," while promising "new glory" for Iran. The countries "don't have anything scheduled as of now," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday in response to a question about planned talks between the two nations. Israel and Iran remain in a tense ceasefire that was brokered by the United States. "It was so bad they ended the war," Trump said earlier in the week of the American bombing on Iran's nuclear facilities. Israel has accused Iran of violating terms of the ceasefire, ordering new attacks in retaliation before the current peace was reached. Israeli forces continued military operations Saturday, killing at least 20 people in a bombing operation in Gaza. The strikes on the Palestinian enclave come one day after the IDF attacked suspected positions held by Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing one and injuring more than a dozen others.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- Yahoo
80 years after his death, North Dakota World War II serviceman's remains identified
Jun. 28—FARGO — Relatives of a North Dakota serviceman who died as a prisoner of war in World War II finally have the answer they've waited so long to receive. Skeletal remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Irvin C. Ellingson have been identified through new DNA technology at a forensic lab in Hawaii, 80 years after his death. Lon Enerson, one of Ellingson's nephews, has led the family effort to bring his uncle's remains home. "We are overjoyed and relieved ... It's a long-overdue answered prayer," Enerson told The Forum, from his home in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Ellingson, who grew up in Dahlen, North Dakota, a tiny community east of Devils Lake, enlisted at age 22 and was 25 when he died, Enerson said. He was serving as a radar observer on a bombing mission to Tokyo on April 14, 1945, when the plane was shot down. Ellingson parachuted to safety but was captured by the Japanese army and held captive at a Japanese prison along with 61 other American service members. The prison caught fire a little over a month later, on May 26, 1945, after high winds fueled fires that were started by an American B-29 bombing raid over Tokyo. None of the American prisoners survived the fire, as they were blocked in by Japanese guards, Enerson said. The remains of more than two dozen American service members were identified in the aftermath but those of 37 others were buried as "unknowns" at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines, where they sat untouched until 2022. The remains are commingled, and the Department of Defense has a threshold for disinterment, for at least 60% of those veterans' families to provide DNA samples in order to make matches. Families pushed the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to disinter those unidentified remains and bring them to a forensic lab in Honolulu, where the newest DNA technology is being used to identify them. Enerson said his uncle is the third serviceman from the Tokyo prison fire to be identified in this manner. The first identification came in September 2024 and the second in January of this year. Ellingson's parents and all of his siblings are deceased, so the next of kin is the oldest nephew or niece, who is Cheryl Severtson, of San Diego. Enerson is fourth on that list. Six groups of Ellingson's relatives have visited the forensic lab in Hawaii since 2022, awaiting his identification, Enerson said. Now that they have answers, some family members may return to the lab to sit privately with Ellingson's remains, which will be placed on an army blanket, he said. The family intends to bury Ellingson's remains in the Middle Forest River Cemetery in rural Dahlen, alongside his parents and other siblings. Enerson said when that day comes, he's been told Ellingson will be buried with full military honors, at government expense. "We just wish his immediate family could have known 80 years ago, but this is the next best time," Enerson said.
