Friday, February 28th – The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) has publicly announced that they have positively identified the remains of 2nd Lt. Robert T. McCollum who had been missing in action since 1944. McCollum entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Cleveland, Ohio. The initial survey and the recovery projects leading up to these identifications were completed in partnership with Project Recover and other experts in the field.
McCollum was a bombardier assigned to the 565th Bombardment Squadron, 389th Bombardment Group, 2nd Combat Bomb Wing, 2nd Air Division, 8th Air Force, in the European Theater. On June 20, 1944, McCollum and several other members of his crew went missing in action when their B-24J Liberator bomber collided with another B-24 in the same formation and crashed into the Baltic Sea off the coast of Denmark. The pilot and co-pilot of McCollum’s aircraft survived after successfully bailing out, but the rest of the crew were killed in the crash.
In 2019, Danish divers found a WWII-era aircraft wreck in the area of the aircraft’s last known location and recovered a .50 caliber machine gun from the site with a damaged serial number that partially matched one from the missing aircraft. A Project Recover survey team from the University of Delaware worked with the Royal Danish Navy to map the wreck site in August 2021 and volunteers from Project Recover returned in 2022 to assist DPAA primary partner Trident Archäologie, along with Wessex Archaeology, as well as representatives from the Royal Danish Navy and the Langelands Museum, in excavating the wreck site. Extensive evidence was recovered, including human remains and ID tags of two of the crew members that were turned over to Danish authorities and then accessioned into the DPAA laboratory. Additional recovery operations were conducted in 2023 and 2024 by Trident Archäologie that found further material evidence and more possible remains.
“It was such an honor for Project Recover to work together with a large international team in the recovery of these Americans” – Dr. Patrick Scannon
About Project Recover
Project Recover is a nonprofit, public-private partnership involving the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego to enlist 21st century science and technology combined with in-depth archival and historical research in a quest to find the final resting places of Americans missing in action since World War II. Project Recover is the only non-governmental organization (NGO) with full vertical capabilities in the POW/MIA recovery space that include operational missions in both underwater and land environments.
Project Recover’s cutting-edge team of scientists, historians, archaeologists, engineers, and divers conduct research and surveys to discover new crash sites, fully document wreckage, and correlate wrecks to known MIA cases. That documentation can then be used by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to evaluate that site for the possible recovery of remains. DPAA is tasked with recovery and repatriation efforts, including notification of the families of these MIAs.
Project Recover has completed over 100 missions in 24 countries, discovered and documented more than 75 aircraft associated with MIAs, developed a growing database of more than 700 cases associated with more than 3,000 MIAs, accounted for over 80 missing-in-action service members, repatriated 17 American heroes, and anticipate the identification of 26 MIAs by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) by the end of 2025.
###
Looks like a great project to be involved in and I hope that this moves forward. Best of luck and I look forward to hearing about the successful operation.
Brett Mickelson