FINALLY COMING HOME
Taunton airman who was MIA to be laid to rest after 74 years
It has been 74 years since Tech. Sgt. John F. Brady of Taunton and eight other airmen were shot down over Merseburg, Germany, 10 months before the end of World War II. But today, flags throughout the state will fly at half staff as his newly discovered remains are buried at St. Francis Old Cemetery in Taunton.
“He’s coming home,” Michael C. Brady said yesterday of the father he never met.
The younger Brady was just 59 days old when the plane carrying his father was hit by flak during a bomb run, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. As the B-17 fell out of formation, German fighters attacked. Witnesses reported seeing the aircraft burst into flames and descend rapidly, crashing roughly a mile southwest of the town of Barby.
Three crew members survived and became prisoners of war. One airman whose body was found was identified in May 1945. Brady, 26; Tech. Sgt. Allen A. Chandler, Jr., 23, of Fletcher, Okla.; 1st Lt. John H. Liekhus, 29, of Anaheim, Calif.; Staff Sgt. Robert O. Shoemaker, 23, of Takoma Park, Md.; and Staff Sgt. Bobby J. Younger, 19, of McKinney, Texas, all were declared missing in action.
In January 1951, the American Graves Registration Command concluded the five had perished in the crash and the location of their remains was unknown.
Decades later, however, Department of Defense historians and analysts, aided by German researchers and local government officials, located a potential crash site associated with the airmen’s loss. And in 2015 and 2016, recovery teams found aircraft wreckage and some of their remains.
Three of the crew — Brady, Shoemaker and Younger — were identified through DNA analysis, forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence. Their remains, together with those that could not be individually identified, were buried as a group this year at Arlington National Cemetery.
Today, a small fragment of Brady’s skull will be buried alongside his parents at St. Francis Old Cemetery in what promises to be an emotional ceremony for his now-73-year-old son, who grew up with so many unanswered questions about his father.
“My mother never talked about him much,” said Brady, who never married or had children of his own. “His sisters all told me what a wonderful person he was. But I never got over it. I really never did.”
Massachusetts Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs Francisco Urena said news of the elder Brady’s identification may offer hope to the families of the more than 82,000 Americans — 2,921 from Massachusetts — missing since World War II.
“It is a very personal experience for each family,” said Urena, a former Marine who presented Michael Brady with the Gold Star pin that is the official symbol of a family member’s sacrifice. “It is what I hope will be the first step toward closure for them.”