23-Year-Old Pilot Crashed During WWII Training Exercise. He’s Remained Missing in Action for Over 80 Years

NEED TO KNOW

• Second Lt. Lester L. Lowry was flying a P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft when he dove and crashed into the ground in Essex, England, on Jan. 26, 1944
• In the 80 years since the accident, he has been listed as a soldier missing in action
• In 2025, U.K. archaeologists with Cotswold Archaeology found over 5,000 artifacts from the crash and continue working to recover his remains

The site of a fallen World War II soldier’s plane has been identified 80 years later.

At the time of the crash, Second Lt. Lester L. Lowry was flying a P-47 Thunderbolt aircraft, named “Lucky Boy,” during a training exercise near Essex, England, on Jan. 26, 1944, according to The Guardian. Then the 23-year-old’s plane suddenly dove straight into the ground and caught on fire. 

Lowry has been listed as a soldier missing in action (MIA) ever since.

In 1949, investigations began searching for signs of Lowry and the tragic accident, but nothing was found, the BBC reported in September. In 1979, amateur archaeologists in Essex recovered multiple aircraft components, some of which were connected to Lowry’s plane and its crash site.

By 2018, the U.S. Department of Defense PoW/MIA accounting agency (DPAA) surveyed the area and requested a professional excavation.

Then in 2023, 78 years after the war ended, the DPAA, the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense and Cotswold Archaeology began working on “Operation Nightingale” to help find, account and honor the soldiers who died in combat. There are still around 72,000 WWII service members unaccounted for, according to The Guardian.

Since Operation Nightingale began, the three agencies have worked on 24,757 square feet of the site and recovered nearly 5,000 of the plane’s artifacts. This includes the engine’s cylinder heads, valves, pistons, fuel system pipes, machine gun components, fuselage, the wings and the cockpit panel pieces, according to the BBC.

With their findings, they discovered that Lowry was the pilot of the 487th Fighter Squadron who died. Now the archaeologists are “piecing together the untold story of a young man who never made it home,” Sandi Toksvig, who is co-hosting an episode of More4’s Hidden Wonders featuring the excavation, told The Guardian.

As archaeologists piece together his life amid the “thousands and thousands of pieces,” they have discovered photographs and Lowry’s personal parachute harness clips.

“You get an intense human connection that you don’t really get in other forms of archaeology,” Cotswolds’ lead archaeologist, Sam Wilson, told The Guardian. “We have photographs of Lowry and we know a bit about his history and his service record. That just brings the person to life.”

Lowry was born in Grove City, Penn., in 1920, according to the BBC. He was orphaned at 9 and raised by his aunt, per The Guardian. He later joined the Pennsylvania National Guard and was mobilized in 1941. He then transferred to the U.S. Air Forces and by November 1943, he was stationed in England, according to the BBC.

It was suspected that Lowry’s crash occurred because he had only had 47 hours of training, and new pilots were typically taken quickly into combat. But a nearby witness at the time of the crash, Peter Morris, now 90, shared his account of the accident, saying that Lowry landed near a schoolyard where 150 kids were, Toksvig explained to The Guardian.

“Peter thinks that Lowry missed the school on purpose,” Toksvig told The Guardian. “Suddenly, the whole story flipped on [its] head. Maybe Lowry wasn’t inexperienced. What he actually was was a hero.”

Wilson added that although Lowry lost his life during training, his “sacrifice is no less than someone who’s killed in the first wave on Omaha Beach,” adding, “Everyone’s doing their duty.”

Lowry’s remains have not been uncovered yet, but once they are, they will be sent back to the U.S.