Secunda, Gustave
Army Staff sergeant

Gustave Secunda, age 30, from Berkshire County Pittsfield, Massachusetts .

Parents: Morris

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Saturday, May 20, 1944
Death details: On July 30, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Gustave Secunda, missing from World War II. Secunda entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Massachusetts and served with the 710th Bombardment Squadron, 447th Bombardment Group. On May 20, 1944, he was the radio operator aboard a B-17G Flying Fortress aircraft, serial number 42-97176, with a crew of ten, which departed Rattlesden, Suffolk, England, in a formation of 200 bombers for a mission against enemy targets around Liege, Belgium. Approximately halfway across the English Channel, the crew noticed .50 caliber machine gun bullet holes along the right wing of the B-17, and that one of the engines was on fire. The aircraft dropped its bomb load in the Channel, and the crew bailed out of the aircraft before it crashed into the water. The air rescue squadron called to the scene found two crew members alive, and the body of a third in the water. Seven crew members, including Secunda, were missing and presumed drowned. In 2017, Wessex Archaeology, a DPAA partner team, recovered human remains during an underwater survey operation at a wind farm off the coast of England. In Jan. 2020, DPAA’s European Detachment, coordinating with officials from the U.S. Army Regional Mortuary Europe/Africa, arranged for the remains to be transferred to local authorities in Great Britain, and thereafter the evidence sent to a DPAA laboratory for analysis. There, based on the laboratory analysis and total circumstantial evidence the remains were found to be those of Secunda.
Cemetery: Memorialized at Arlington National

Source: National Archives, American Battle Monuments Commission, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Berkshire County Eagle (1945, 2002)