Ssgt John H. Danneker
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) has publicly announced that they have positively identified the remains of Staff Sergeant John H. Danneker, who had been missing in action since 1944. Danneker entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Williamsport, Pennsylvania. 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.
Danneker was a waist gunner 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, Danneker 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 Danneker’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.
“My work with archaeological finds has always been fulfilling, but this recovery mission in Denmark introduced me to a different aspect of my field: the recovery of servicemen whose relatives remain unaware of their fate,” said University of Denmark forensic anthropologist and Project Recover Team Member Svenja Weise, who participated in the mission to locate Danneker’s aircraft. “I am glad that John Danneker will return to his family after 80 years of uncertainty, and hope that my continuing work at Project Recover will help to bring more airmen home.”
Svenja Weise on a mission in Kwajalein.
