Weese, Henry Douglas
Air Force 1st lieutenant

Henry Douglas Weese from Susanville, California, Lassen county.

Service era: Korea

Date of death: Tuesday, January 13, 1953
Death details: Late in the afternoon on January 12, 1953, a RB-29A Superfortress (serial number 44-62217, call sign Stardust 40) departed Yokata Air Base, Japan, with a crew of 14 aviators.  The briefed mission was a classified leaflet dropping operation targeting multiple cities along the west coast of North Korea in an area known as “MiG Alley”. At approximately 45 minutes before midnight, a ground station received a May Day distress call on the air emergency channel, but all attempts to establish radio contact failed. A ground radar station reported the distressed aircraft as approximately 15 miles south of the Yalu River; a short time later the Superfortress disappeared from radar. On January 21, a communist propaganda broadcast from Beijing, China, claimed that the B-29 had been shot down over Manchuria; of the 14 aircrew members, all but three had survived.  The 11 survivors were held in Mukden (Shenyang), then Peking (Beijing), and finally released through Hong Kong in 1955. It is believed that the remaining three aviators perished while attempting to parachute over Antung (Dandong).

First Lieutenant Henry Douglas Weese, who joined the U.S. Air Force from California, was assigned to the 581st Air Resupply Squadron, 581st Air Resupply and Communications Wing. On the day of his loss he was on temporary duty orders to 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron. 1st Lt Weese was the Radar Operator on this RB-29 when it was lost and one of the three aviators that remain unaccounted-for. Today, First Lieutenant Weese is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency