Betchley, George W.
Army 1st lieutenant

George W. Betchley, age 20, from Westchester County Yonkers, New York .

Parents: John H. Betchley

Service era: World War II
Schools: Yonkers High, Syracuse University

Date of death: Thursday, March 22, 1945
Death details: On June 8, 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of First Lieutenant George W. Betchley, missing from World War II. First Lieutenant Betchley joined the U.S. Army Air Forces from New York, and served with the 429th Bombardment Squadron, 2nd Bombardment Group. On March 22, 1945, he was the navigator aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress (serial number 44-8191) with a crew of ten on a bombing mission targeting an oil refinery in Germany. The B-17 crashed in southwestern Poland near Glinica. Only two members of the crew survived. Civilians in the village near Glinica found the remains of one of the crew and buried them in the village cemetery, where they were located in 1948 by American Graves Registration Service personnel. The remains could not be identified at the time, and were interred in a U.S. military cemetery in Belgium. In 2016, these remains were disinterred and taken to the DPAA laboratory in Hawaii, where DNA testing and modern forensic analysis allowed for the identification of 1LT Betchley.
Cemetery: Tablets of the Missing at Henri-Chapelle American, Belgium

Source: National Archives, American Battle Monuments Commission, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Herald Statesman (1945)