Brian McDonald
2nd Lt. Allan W. Knepper took off from Tunisia in his P-38 “Lightning” jet as “one of many fighter waves” prepared to attack enemy Axis forces in Sicily, Italy, on July 10, 1943.
During the attack, air forces were sent in every 30 minutes, avoiding enemy fire while strafing a German armored column.
Knepper, 27, and the 49th Fighter Squadron encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire. Another pilot reported witnessing his plane “suddenly turn skyward before rolling halfway and falling to the ground.” No evidence was found that he deployed his parachute, and Knepper was declared missing in action, his remains never found.
Now, more than 80 years later, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency was announced that they accounted for Knepper’s remains, bringing peace to their last surviving family member.
The DPAA did not specify how they accounted for Knepper, or what was left of him was used to make the identification. Since the 1970s, the agency has counted the remains of nearly 1,000 Americans who died during World War II. The remains are returned to the families for burial with full military honors, the agency said. he said.
Knepper was memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Italy, according to HonorStates.org, a website that tracks military personnel. The military typically marks those names with a rosette or other symbol once their remains are accounted for, but the DPAA did not say whether that would be done for Knepper.
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Knepper was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and an Air Medal, the website said.
Knepper’s life was also honored in “The Jagged Edge of Duty: A Fighter Pilot’s World War II”. The book, written by historian Robert Richardson, follows Knepper’s life and death and even offers some insight into where his remains might be found. It also offered closure to Knepper’s only surviving relative, 79-year-old Shirley Finn.
“I felt like I finally met my brother,” Finn said in an interview with the Lewiston Tribune. Finn is Knepper’s half-sister, the newspaper said. Finn said her family “never gave up hope” that Knepper’s remains would be found.
“I’m tremendously grateful for (Richardson),” she told the Lewiston Tribune in 2017. “I didn’t think anyone would be interested in reading a book about my brother. It didn’t occur to me.”
