He’s proof that no man’s left behind.
The remains of a World War II-era US fighter pilot who disappeared while on a daring raid in Asia were recently discovered in a field in Thailand 80 years after he went missing, thanks to the work of a group of dogged sleuths.
First Lt. Franklin McKinney, a member of the famous all-volunteer American “Flying Tigers” squadron, was last seen taking off from Beitan Airfield in Yunnan, China on Nov. 5, 1944.
Though McKinney was pronounced dead by the military in March 1946 – two years after failing to return from a dangerous assignment in November 1944, the plane wreck and his remains were never located by military authorities.
The mystery of McKinney’s disappearance was picked up more than six decades later in 2010 by a group of amateur sleuths.
Renewed interest started with then-US Air Force Academy cadet Daniel Jackson – who stumbled upon the story while writing a senior thesis about McKinney’s squadron, according to CNN.
Jackson enlisted the help of Royal Thai Air Force Museum head, Sakpinit Promthep, and independent American researcher Richard Hakanson in investigating McKinney’s fate, as documented in an article he wrote for Chiang Mai CityLife.
The trio got to work and Sakpinit soon discovered a document from the time that mentioned a recon plane that had been downed by a “midair lightning strike,” as well as a report about a skull, according to the outlet.
But the village mentioned in the document was so small, and it took Hakanson years of searching the country on foot to find the alleged crash site.
Miraculously, Hakanson found a 94-year-old witness, Fong Inma, in the small village of Mae Kua in 2017. She was able to testify that the plane crashed in what is now a rice field nearly 70 years ago.
Fong’s testimony was strong enough to convince Jackson that the rice paddy was the site of McKinney’s crash. And Jackson was in turn able to convince American authorities to investigate the site.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency – an agency a part of the Department of War dedicated to finding Americans missing in action and ensuring that there’s “no one left behind” – spent three years starting in 2023 combing the site for fragments to identify McKinney.
In March 2026, the search came to an end. Investigators were finally able to find McKinney’s remains in the rice field.
The long-lost airman was honored with a ceremony at the US Embassy in Thailand before being repatriated to the United States.
“After almost 82 years, Frank McKinney is home again. America has kept its promise,” now Lt. Col. Jackson wrote in his book about his 16-year search.
