Salsbury, Richard G.
Army Staff Sergeant

Richard G. Salsbury from Maine, Somerset county.

Service era: World War II

Date of death: Sunday, August 1, 1943
Death details: On September 23, 2021, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Staff Sergeant Richard Gerald Salsbury, missing from World War II. Staff Sergeant Salsbury entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Maryland and served in the 345th Bombardment Squadron, 98th Bombardment Group. On August 1, 1943, Operation TIDAL WAVE was launched, a bombing raid against the oil refineries around Ploiești, Romania. One hundred and seventy-seven B-24 Liberators took off from Benghazi, Libya, for the raid. Fifty-one planes failed to return, including the one (serial number 42-40312) on which SSG Salsbury was a gunner. His remains were not identified following the war. Operation TIDAL WAVE, while successfully damaging the Ploiești oil refineries, cost the lives of hundreds of USAAF airmen, many of whom were interred by Romanian citizens into the Bolovan Cemetery in Ploiești. During postwar operations there, the American Graves Registration Command exhumed unknown remains that were eventually reinterred at Ardennes American Cemetery and Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery. In 2017, DPAA began exhuming those unknowns for comparison with the unaccounted-for airmen lost during Operation TIDAL WAVE. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established an association between one set of these unknown remains and SSG Salsbury.

Source: National Archives, findagrave.com