On May 15, 2026, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Franklin H. McKinney, missing from World War II.
McKinney entered the service from Rhode Island and served in the 35th Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, 14th Air Force. On Nov. 5, 1944, he departed Yunnanyi, China, piloting an F-5 Lightning (serial number 43-38615) on a reconnaissance mission over Thailand and Burma. No contact was made with the aircraft after it left base. A wartime report from the Royal Thai Air Force Museum indicated a plane was hit by lightning, exploded, and crashed in a wooded area in Ban Mae Kua, Sop Prap District, Lampang Province, Thailand. In 2018, third-party researchers located a crash site in a rice paddy in Lampang Province and associated it with McKinney's aircraft. A Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency team investigated the site in 2019 and 2021 before a recovery team excavated the location in 2022, recovering possible human remains. The remains were sent to the DPAA laboratory for analysis. There, scientists used modern forensic techniques to identify McKinney.
He is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.
