MISSING IN ACTION

Among the thousands of young Americans who served with the Second Air Division of the Eighth Air Force during World War II are 1,479 men who were lost in service and remain Missing in Action. They departed from airfields across East Anglia on missions over occupied Europe, never knowing that they would not return. For their families, there was no funeral at home, no grave to visit, and often no final answer about exactly what happened during their last mission.

Some disappeared with their aircraft over the North Sea, English Channel, or other waters. Others were lost when aircraft crashed in areas where recovery was impossible or where remains could not be identified. Crews that had lived, trained, flown, and faced combat together could disappear in a matter of moments. At home, parents, wives, children, brothers, and sisters waited for news that sometimes never came.

With no known grave, these men are remembered on the Walls and Tablets of the Missing at American military cemeteries and memorials overseass. Their names carved in stone serve as their memorials. They stand beside the graves of their comrades as a permanent reminder that absence of a grave does not mean absence from our history or our remembrance.

The following 1,479 names represent individual lives, individual families, and sacrifices that must never be reduced to a statistic. This listing is preserved so that descendants, researchers, historians, and future generations may know who these men were and remember the price they paid. They have no known grave. They did not come home. But they are not forgotten.

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