APRIL 1, 2025 – Missing in Action. Just six weeks before World War II would end, the news came to four U.S. service member Families via telegram. Two Douglas A-26B Invader airplanes were struck down by anti-aircraft defenses on a mission to bomb Dülmen, Germany, on March 21, 1945. Four of the six crewmembers were never found: Staff Sgt. Loring E. Lord (28), Second Lt. Lynn W. Hadfield (26), Sgt. John Kalausich (19), and Sgt. Vernon L. Hamilton (19).
Exactly 80 years later, Family members gathered at the recently discovered crash sites near Reken, Germany, to unveil a memorial stone and remember their missing airmen who were finally recovered, along with pieces of the airplanes. At the first site, a moment of silence was observed at 12:03 p.m.—the time of the crashes. Family members shared their words of remembrance and thanked those involved in the recovery and the honoring of their airmen.
“This is truly now sacred ground,” said Scott Hadfield, nephew of pilot Hadfield, as he looked out on the crowd of attendees, including local German residents and the mayor. “I did not expect this many people to honor these men.”
Beverly Divita, niece of airplane navigator Kalausich, shared a letter written by her mother in remembrance of her brother. They had not grown up in the same household, so it wasn’t until he visited during his 30 days of leave before deploying overseas that she really got to know him.
“When hugging goodbye I said to myself, ‘I just found my brother and now I’m losing him again,’” she wrote. Then she recalled in the letter the vivid memory of the night they received the telegram that he was missing in action.
The airmen belonged to 642nd Bombardment Squadron, 409th Bombardment Group, Ninth Air Force, United States Army Air Force. The two airplanes flew in formation during that fatal mission when Second Lt. Donald J. Cotton’s plane, with Staff Sgt. Don E. Nord and Lord aboard, sustained a direct blow to the wing of the aircraft by German anti-air defenses. The debris and shrapnel from Cotton’s plane struck Hadfield’s. They both plummeted to the ground killing all six crewmembers aboard.
“[Vern] never had a chance to tell his story to his Family and friends,” said Hamilton’s great niece, Shelley Atkins. “That is why I continue to tell [his] story.”
Seventy-four years after the incident, a military historian and archaeologist, Adolf Hagedorn, discovered information about resident eyewitnesses to the 1945 crash on nearby farmland, and he began searching. The buried plane remnants were positively identified and the farm owner authorized excavations on his land. Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency and the History Flight organization partnered to form a digging team and began the work immediately in the winter of 2016.
The human remains found at the farm field crash site were identified as belonging to Hadfield, Kalausich, and gunner Hamilton. Family members were notified about the positive identification in 2018.
“This must have come as quite a shock as those Families were unaware of the recovery two years prior,” said Danny Keay, conflict archaeologist, forensic osteologist, and team leader of the 2016 excavation. “In some cases, this opened up old wounds which had never completely healed in the first place.”
The remains of the Hadfield crew were repatriated in 2019 and buried with military honors. It was not until that same year that the final member of the Cotton crew, airplane gunner Lord, was discovered at the second crash site in a pasture more than a 20-minute drive from the first.
“I feel like he’s here,” said Amy Hendl, about her great uncle Lord. “I think most of him is because what came home is two small little bones and some very small fragments. They did test the DNA so we know that he was here when he died.”
Hendl and her husband were given permission to visit the dig site six years ago to witness the recovery efforts underway. This June, Lord’s remains will be buried after repatriation to the U.S. and Family and relatives will celebrate his life and service together as he is finally laid to rest next to his parents’ graves.
“My whole Family talked about him a lot,” said Hendl, great niece of Lord, explaining how all the pictures and letters were saved. “We always knew the story—we just never had closure. And, now we do.”
Some of the Family members and relatives attending these commemorations near Reken had begun their trip days earlier at the airfield in France, retracing the journey of their service members 80 years ago. They stopped at Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Belgium and the Netherlands American Cemetery, where a combined 16,000 U.S. service members lay, to see the walls presenting the names of nearly 2,200 Americans whose bodies were never found. As they smoothed sand from the beaches of Normandy over the inscription of their airman’s name, they could now count them among those found and laid to rest.
“We are trying to give other Families hope … to help find out about their lost loved ones,” said Keay. “These Families here have experienced something they had never hoped to do, and that is not only closure but to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors. It has changed them forever.”
By Sandra Wilson
USAG Benelux Public Affairs