Divers Stumble Upon The Plane Wreckage of a WWII Airman That Went Missing In The Sea 80 Years Ago
For decades, the depths of the Baltic Sea held a secret—a silent witness to one of World War II’s many tragedies. The wreckage of a fallen aircraft lay hidden beneath the waves, a heartbreaking reminder of the airmen who never returned home. Families of the missing clung to fading memories, uncertain if they would ever learn the fate of their loved ones. Now, nearly 80 years after the chaos of the war consumed him whole, one airman’s story is finally coming full circle, according to Archaeology News.
In June 1944, 2nd Lt. Robert T. McCollum, a 22-year-old bombardier from Cleveland, Ohio, was assigned to the 565th Bombardment Squadron, part of the 8th Air Force. He was flying a mission aboard a B-24J Liberator bomber when disaster struck, stated Fox 8. His aircraft collided mid-air with another B-24 over the Baltic Sea sending both planes plunging into the waters off the Danish coast. While the pilot and co-pilot managed to parachute to safety, McCollum and the rest of the crew perished in the crash. With no remains recovered, he was officially declared "nonrecoverable" by the U.S. War Department in 1950. Efforts to find McCollum and his fallen crew persisted over the decades, but they remained of no use—until a breakthrough in 2019. Danish divers exploring the sea stumbled upon a wreckage similar to a WWII-era aircraft.
Timmy Gambin ( who led the divers) revealed, "Humility and honor drove every single one of us to go beyond the call of duty, to do our best to get this boy home. It must be one of the most satisfying things that the team has done to date," stated Smithsonian magazine. Among the objects retrieved was a .50-caliber machine gun with a serial number partially matching that of McCollum’s downed plane. This discovery sparked a major recovery mission involving several organizations, including Project Recover, the University of Delaware, Trident Archaeology, Wessex Archaeology, the Royal Danish Navy, and the Langelands Museum. Deepwater surveys and detailed excavations followed between 2021 and 2024. Divers cleared unexploded ordnance, mapped the wreckage, and unraveled a series of remarkable findings—personal effects, parachute fragments, and, most significantly, human remains.
The process, though painstaking, yielded a glorious conclusion. Mark Moline, a University of Delaware professor and co-founder of Project Recover revealed, "My engineer is actually the one who found the first signs of remains…We found bits of parachute and the parachute led us to the parachute cords, and then the harness, and then the remains…So yeah, the bone remains are still there…And ask for their DNA samples…And when they get a positive match there, they know who they have. So, it’s quite a process," stated Fox 8.
McCollum’s name had long been etched on the Wall of the Missing at the Cambridge American Cemetery in England. Now, a rosette will be placed beside his name, highlighting that he has been accounted for at last, stated Archaeology News. Moline added, "Resolve these over 80,000 cases that are of service members that are still missing…So we have a daunting task ahead of us. But we do it for the families."