WWII airman shot down honored on Memorial Day weekend after returning home
2nd Lt. Thomas Vincent Kelly has been returned to his hometown of Livermore 81 years after his death.
By John Ramos
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LIVERMORE, California (KPIX) — As America honors its fallen warriors on Memorial Day, one WWII airman has been returned to his hometown of Livermore. His story is now known because of a family that refused to take missing for an answer.
As the hearse rolled down the dusty road of the cemetery, 81 years after his death, 2nd Lt. Thomas Vincent Kelly was coming home.
Thomas Kelly, known as Tommy to his friends, grew up in Livermore and enlisted in the Army Air Corps in Aug 1942.
He became a bombardier aboard a B-24 bomber, nicknamed Heaven Can Wait, that flew more than 30 missions.
On March 11, 1944, his crew was assigned to attack anti-aircraft positions in Hansa Bay, a remote area of Papua, New Guinea. As they approached the target, the aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and went down.
The family received only a four-sentence letter reporting the death, with no other information.
“It became, I think, a kind of grief that could only be dealt with in silence,” said Scott Althaus, Kelly’s second cousin. “And so, the memory of Tommy was a forbidden topic within the family.”
But Althaus said many years later, they discovered something else written about that day.
“Fifty years after these events, a letter from a person in the plane opposite my relative recalled that the co-pilot faced the other two planes and saluted as their plane banked down into the water. They knew that they were going down,” he said. “So, the big focus for our family was to try to find what happened. And it took us four years of research and eventually we came to have a clear understanding of what happened on March 11, 1944.”
Over the years, Althaus began devoting his Memorial Days to researching the crash, and eventually, he began to pinpoint the area where the plane probably went down. That’s when the family took action.
“An aunt of mine, on her own initiative, decided to reach out to Project Recover and say, ‘Hey, our family has been doing some research. We think we know where this plane is in Papua, New Guinea. Would you be interested in hearing about what we’ve found?'” said Althaus. “And, surprisingly, they said, ‘Yes.'”
Project Recover is an organization dedicated to locating and recovering service members missing in action. They put together a team of divers to survey the area identified by the family and after 17 days of searching, they found the wreckage of Heaven Can Wait.
It was sitting in 200 feet of water, and a Navy dive operation was able to recover the remains of the crew members.
And so, on Sunday in Livermore, with all his family’s questions now answered, Tommy was no longer missing.
“Lt. Kelly, today we honor your service, your sacrifice and commitment,” said Camp Parks Commander, Lt. Col. Richard King. “We mourn the loss as a family, a community and as a grateful nation.”
At the ceremony, Althaus thanked all the people who, despite being strangers, helped in the recovery of their fallen loved one.
“For his family gathered today, it’s almost indescribable what this is going to mean for us,” he said. “This whole part of our family’s journey started on Memorial Day, 2013 and it is going to conclude on Memorial Day of 2025, exactly 12 years to the day.”
Memorial Day is about remembering the individual sacrifices of those who died in wartime. But that’s something that’s never quite known for those who simply go missing.
Lt. Thomas Vincent Kelly will be laid to rest at the new Monte Vista Memorial Gardens cemetery in Livermore. Plans are already underway for a veteran’s memorial to be named in his honor.
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