LI link in WW2 mystery
Cemetery secrets
The Pentagon is launching efforts to solve a baffling World War II mystery: whether dozens of US sailors listed missing from a ship disaster were actually recovered and buried as unknowns in a Long Island cemetery.
More than 130 victims of the USS Turner’s 1944 explosion and sinking near New York Harbor are still officially missing.
But researcher Ted Darcy found papers last year indicating at least four of them were buried as unknowns in a Nassau County military cemetery. He believes the rest could be there, too.
After The Associated Press initially reported on Darcy’s findings in November, the Pentagon office that identifies and recovers the nation’s war dead said only that the records that could confirm exactly how many of the Turner’s sailors are buried in the cemetery were missing.
But in recent days, the Defense POW/MIA Ac- counting Agency said it is working to locate the files associated with the Turner unknowns buried in the Farmingdale cemetery.
The Navy destroyer sank off Sandy Hook, NJ, after a series of internal explosions on Jan. 3, 1944. The Navy never determined what caused the initial blast, but an inquiry found that munitions were being handled below deck around the time of the first explosion.
Half of the nearly 300 men on board survived, but scores of others were killed and listed as missing.
Relatives of the missing crew members hope the remains might be found and reburied in marked graves with full military honors.
“I’d like to see if we can have closure on this, find out who’s in the graves,” said Richard Duffy, a 61year-old retired mechanic from Ballston Spa, NY, who was named after his fallen uncle.