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Quiet ceremony at D/FW Airport marks WWII airman's homecoming
05:33 PM CDT on Friday, April 24, 2009
By WENDY HUNDLEY / The Dallas Morning News
whundley@dallasnews.com
A World War II airman was welcomed home to Texas this week – 65 years after he went missing in action.
Staff Sgt. Jimmie Doyle Army Air Corps Staff Sgt. Jimmie Doyle was a nose gunner in a B-24 Liberator when his plane was shot down Sept. 1, 1944, over the Pacific.
In a quiet ceremony Thursday on the tarmac at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Doyle's remains were finally re-united with the son he left behind.
"He's home at last," said Tommy Doyle, 66, a retired high school football coach from Snyder.
On Saturday, Staff Sgt. Jimmie Doyle will be buried in with full military honors in Lamesa.
Tommy Doyle was only 20 months old when his father's plane took a direct hit over the Palau Islands. When he was growing up in Lamesa, his widowed mother said very little about the quiet man who worked as a stonemason before the war broke out. Five years after her husband disappeared, she received a letter from the government stating that the remains of the downed crew could not be recovered.
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03/25/05: Man travels to Pacific to visit wreckage of WWII plane his father died in
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Link: The Bent Prop Project
Sgt. Doyle and seven other airmen remained in their watery grave until a group called the Bent Prop Project began searching for American aircraft shot down by Japanese forces over the Palau Islands.
Several years ago, when Tommy Doyle heard that the group had found the wreckage of his father's plane, he enrolled in scuba-diving classes in Lubbock – a 90-mile trip from his West Texas home – to be able to visit his father's final resting place.
In 2005, he went to the Palau Islands and made the 70-foot dive in crystal clear waters. "I wanted to lay my hands on that place and touch it," Tommy Doyle said at the time.
But it was three more years before the nose turret of the aircraft was located and Jimmie Doyle's remains, including his dogtags, were found. On Feb. 28, the family received word that a positive DNA match had been confirmed by the military's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.
Eight members of the Bent Prop Project will be coming from all over the country to be honorary pallbearers for the fallen airman Saturday.
"So many people have worked to make this happen," Tommy Doyle said Friday from his home in Snyder. "There's no way I could never thank them."
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