FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 24, 2025 – The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), in partnership with Project Recover and other experts in the field, has announced that they have positively identified the remains of Staff Sergeant Eugene J. Darrigan who had been Missing In Action since World War II. The 26-year-old from Wappinger Falls, NY served as radio operator in a B-24 bomber named Heaven Can Wait that was shot down over a remote bay in Papua New Guinea on March 11, 1944. In 2017 the missing bomber was located underwater at a depth of over 200 feet by the partnership Project Recover, leading to a 2023 mission by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency to recover crew remains from the wreck site. At the time, this was the deepest underwater MIA recovery effort ever undertaken by the U.S. government.
The 11-man crew of Heaven Can Wait was part of the 320th squadron of the “Jolly Rogers” 90th Bombardment Group and was on a mission to bomb Japanese anti-aircraft batteries around Hansa Bay when their B-24 was shot down by enemy fire causing it to crash into the ocean. Present-day Papua New Guinea was the site of military action in the Pacific from January 1942 to the end of the war in August 1945, with significant losses of aircraft and servicemen.
Project Recover set its sights on finding Heaven Can Wait after being presented with four years of research on circumstances of the crash, compiled by family members of one the B-24 crew members seeking closure for their lost relative. These data included historical eyewitness narratives from official military reports, mission documents, and diary entries from crew members on other aircraft in formation with the B-24 during its flight. In October 2017, a team from Project Recover performed an archaeological survey of Hansa Bay using scanning sonars, high definition imagers, advanced diving, and unmanned aerial and underwater robotic technologies. After covering nearly 27 square kilometers of the sea floor over 11 days, Project Recover located the debris field of the B-24 bomber at a depth of 213 feet.
Project Recover formally communicated details of the crash site to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), and based on that site survey the DPAA sent a Navy diving expedition back to Hansa Bay in 2018 to confirm that the site contained the likely wreck of the Heaven Can Wait bomber. In 2019 DPAA leadership started planning for a mission to recover crew remains from the wreck site. That effort would be delayed by the global COVID-19 pandemic, but in early 2023 the DPAA sent a mission team including the Navy’s Experimental Diving Unit to Hansa Bay for a multi-week recovery operation. This was the deepest underwater MIA recovery operation the U.S. government had ever undertaken.
Staff Sergeant Darrigan is the second member of the “Heaven Can Wait” crew to be positively identified by the DPAA; identification of the remains for navigator 2nd Lt. Thomas V. Kelly, Jr. was announced by DPAA on November 15, 2024.