THE INDEPENDENT: May 29, 2025
by Ruth Roberts
Livermore High Graduate Receives Full Military Honors After Eight Decades
LIVERMORE — On March 11, 1944, U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Thomas V. Kelly Jr., a 22-year-old Livermore resident and World War II bombardier, was shot down over Hansa Bay, Papua New Guinea. He and 10 other crew members aboard the B-24 bomber were declared missing in action. For decades, the families of the missing men held out hope that their loved ones’ remains would be recovered.
But it wasn’t until 2013 that Kelly’s second cousin, Scott Althaus, a political science and communications professor at the University of Illinois, learned the details of Kelly’s final mission. Althaus and members of his extended family collaborated with a research team known as Project Recover to investigate the circumstances, which led to the discovery of the sunken wreckage of the plane, nicknamed “Heaven Can Wait.”