Downed by lightning eight decades ago, a US airman is finally coming home | CNN

More than 80 years after he took off from an airfield in China, a US Army Air Force pilot is going home.

The route back to the United States for 1st Lt. Franklin McKinney has been long and paved by the term paper of a US Air Force Academy cadet; the friendship of a Thai air force officer; the remarkably clear memories of a villager in her mid-90s; the curiosity of an American expat; and, incredibly, a massive flood in Bangkok.

Remains recovered from a rice paddy in northern Thailand have been confirmed as those of McKinney, who disappeared while flying an F-5E – the reconnaissance version of the twin-engine, twin-tail P-38 Lightning fighter – on November 5, 1944, according to the US Embassy in Bangkok.

The military declared McKinney dead in March 1946, though no crash site had been identified, let alone any remains of the man from Providence, Rhode Island.

But as the embassy release states, the US military maintains a “sacred promise to leave no-one behind” – even decades later.