Remains of adolescent sailor of World War II killed on the ship that hit the under the underwater identified 8 decades later

An 18 -year -old sailor who was killed aboard a US destroyer. During World War II he was counted for more than 80 years after his death, military officers said on Tuesday.

The Navy reserve sailor of the USA. UU. The USS Glennon destroyer was assigned in the summer of 1944, said the Pow/Mia Defense Accounting Agency in a press release. The Glennon participated in the D Day on June 6, 1944. Two days after the invasion, he hit an underwater mine off the coast of France. The ship was caught and could not be towed to a place safe before it was beaten by a flood of German artillery on June 10.

The ship sank after being hit by German bombing. Mullaney and another 24 sailors were registered as missing. Mullaney was declared not recoverable in May 1949, just under five years after the sinking of the ship. His name was recorded on the walls of the disappeared in the US Cambridge cemetery in England. He was awarded with a purple heart, according to an obituary published at the end of August.

After World War II ended in 1945, the Graves American Registry Command began efforts to recover members of the missing US service who had died during combat. The agency made dozens of searches on the coast of France, said the DPAA. By 1951, the agency had identified the remains of five sailors of the USS Glennon.

In 1957, the saviors in St. Marie du Mont, France, brought pieces of the USS Glennon to the shore. The pieces broken down for scrap. A local resident found human remains in a large section of remains from the front of the ship, said the DPAA. American officials of the Army Mausoleum in Frankfurt, Germany, then took possession of the remains and designated them as X-9296. The efforts to identify the remains failed, and were buried in the American Cemetery of Ardenas in Belgium in March 1959.

In 2021, DPAA historians began new efforts to give an account of the sailors who died aboard the USS Glennon. In August 2022, the remains X-9296 were exhumed from the Belgian cemetery and transferred to the DPAA Laboratory. Research, including dental and anthropological analysis, as well as the analysis of mitochondrial DNA and chromosomes and identified the remains such as those of Mullaney in March 2025.

Mullaney’s obituary said he was one of the 10 children. All his brothers have died, but he has several nieces, nephews and surviving cousins. The obituary said his funeral would be held in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was ready to be buried near his parents, the obituary said.

A rosette will also be placed next to his name on the walls of the disappeared to indicate that he has been counted, said the DPAA.

“This will bring a closure to our family,” said Mullaney’s niece, Mary Louise Brambilla, to the military publication Stars and Stripes. “Finally he will return home.”

• Second World War
• day d
• France