80 years later, remains of World War II pilot ID'd as Bay Area man

LIVERMORE, Calif. - After 80 years, a World War II Army airman who went missing in action has been identified, and officials say the man was a Livermore resident.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency partnered with nonprofit, Project Recover, to positively identify the remains of 2nd Lt. Thomas V. Kelly, a 21-year-old man from Livermore who served as a bombardier.

Kelly was shot down in his "Heaven Can Wait" B-24 bomber over a remote bay in Papua New Guinea on March 11, 1944. 

In 2017, Project Recover discovered the airman's remains over 200 feet underwater.

Officials said enemy fire caused Kelly to crash into the ocean, and that the country was a site of military action from January 1942 to August 1945 where many men and aircraft were lost.

"I knew that I had a relative who had died in WWII and had been missing in action. Didn’t even know his name at that time," Scott Althaus, Kelly Jr.'s cousin, told KTVU on Sunday.  

Althaus researches US military conflicts and is a professor at the University of Illinois. 

He said he asked his family for more information and then started researching his relatives on Memorial Day back in 2013. 

For nearly five years, he searched for information from people all over the world.

"We were able to hand that information over to Project Recover, which is a non-profit that goes out and looks for missing Americans from past wars to be able to identify where their remains might be found," said Althaus. 

Last year, the DPAA led a mission to recover the remains from the wreck site. This recovery marks the deepest underwater recovery for a missing-in-action serviceman by the U.S. government.

Project Recover said it found the remains when its team, using advanced diving and underwater robotic technologies, scanned around 27 square kilometers for 11 days.

Kelly and his jet were part of an 11-man crew of the 320th squadron of the "Jolly Rogers" 90th Bombardment Group. They were on a mission to bomb Japanese anti-aircraft around Hansa Bay, the area where Kelly went missing.

Their search for Kelly and his Heaven Can Wait jet was hatched after Project Recover was presented with years of research on the circumstances surrounding the crash and collaboration with family members seeking closure.

"We’ve come to read his letters and understand more about the memories that we do have to fill the gaps in our knowledge of him. We know that he was a young man who was very excited to serve his country and who was doing exactly what he wanted to do. After the war, he was thinking about becoming a pilot, coming back to Livermore," said Althaus.   

Althaus says Kelly Jr. attended Livermore High School, and he still has relatives living in the Bay Area. Now the family is just looking forward to honoring his memory.

"For the Livermore community and the entire Bay Area, this is somebody who served us all, and he’s finally going to be coming home," said Althaus. 

Althaus says the search for Kelly, Jr. was one of the deepest recoveries ever made by the US military and a ceremony will be held for his cousin in Livermore in May 2025.