BOSTON — The remains of a Massachusetts airman killed during World War II have been identified.
U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Joseph E. Finneran, who was killed during World War II, was accounted for Aug. 9, according to a Friday announcement from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
In the summer of 1943, the 22-year-old from the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston was a bombardier aboard a Consolidated B-24D Liberator assigned to the 345th Bombardment Squadron, 98th Bombardiers Group (Heavy), the “Pyramidiers.”
On Aug. 1 of that year, his aircraft crashed after being hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire during Operation Tidal Wave, the largest bombing mission against the oil fields and refineries at Ploiesti, north of Bucharest, Romania.
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Of the Americans killed, only 27 could be identified and Finneran wasn’t among them, according to the DPAA. The remains that could not be identified were buried as unknowns in the Hero Section of the Civilian and Military Cemetery of Bolovan in Ploiesti. Following the war, those remains were reinterred in the American Military Cemetery at Neuville-en-Condroz, Belgium.
The remains that were later identified as Finneran’s were exhumed in 2017 and later identified through anthropological and DNA analysis, according to the agency.
Finneran will be buried Nov. 9 in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.
