Carlin, Henry J.
Army 1st lieutenant

Henry J. Carlin, age 26, from Philadelphia County Philadelphia, Pennsylvania .

Parents: Frank J. Carlin

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Tuesday, August 3, 1943
Death details: On April 16, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of 1st. Lt. Henry J. Carlin, missing from World War II. Carlin entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Pennsylvania and served in the 22nd Bombardment Squadron, 341st Bombardment Group. On August 3, 1943, he was the navigator aboard a B-25C Mitchell (serial number 42-53417) which took off from Kurmitola Air Base, India, with a crew of six for a low altitude attack on the Meiktila Damn in Burma. The bomber crashed near the dam during the mission. Two crew members survived the crash; one man returned to allied control, and the other died as a Japanese POW in Rangoon, Burma. The other four members of the crew, including Carlin, were killed in the crash and their remains were not recovered after the war. All were declared missing in action. In 1947 the American Grave Registration Service (AGRS) recovered four sets of remains from a common grave near the village of Kyunpobin, Burma. According to local witnesses, the remains came from an “American crash”. The remains could not be identified at the time and were interred as Unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, Honolulu, Hawaii. In January 2022, after the Department of Defense approved DPAA’s disinterment request, all four sets of remains were exhumed and accessioned into the DPAA laboratory for scientific analysis. Based on the laboratory analysis and the totality of circumstantial evidence, one of sets of remains was identified as belonging to Carlin.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Punxsutawney Spirit (1943), Philadelphia Inquirer (1943)