News

Remains of second World War II MIA from Henderson County identified

U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Charles R. Smith

By Amy McCraw, Published: October 6, 2026

The remains of a second soldier from Henderson County missing since World War II have been identified and will be returned to the community.

The federal government’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Charles R. Smith on May 29, 83 years after he went missing while flying on board a B-24D Liberator during a bombing mission over Italy in 1943.
Smith’s remains are expected to be returned to Henderson County later this month, Smith’s great nephew, Kyle Smith, said recently.
“They are very happy to know and bring some closure,” Smith said of his family’s reaction to learning that Charles Smith’s remains were located after so many years. “That’s great he is going to come back to Hendersonville. It’s a longtime for his bones to be back in his hometown.”
Smith, who is a pastor at Mud Creek Baptist Church, said he expects to offer a prayer when his great uncle is laid to rest.
Charles Smith served in the 67th Bombardment Squadron, 44th Bombardment Group during World War II. On Aug. 16, 1943, he was a tail gunner on board a B-24D Liberator that took off from Benina, Libya, along with 25 other B-24s, on a bombing mission against enemy airfields at Foggia, Italy, according to the DPAA’s website.
“The operation inflicted heavy damage on the targets, but seven of the aircraft, including this B-24D, failed to return to base. Searchers found no possible crash location nor any signs or remains of the 10 missing crew members,” according to the website. “In April 1945, the American Graves Registration Command recovered several unidentified, commingled sets of remains buried in the Cemetery of Lacedonia, Italy. The remains were reportedly of American airmen who were shot down on Aug. 16, 1943.”
Although investigators later located aircraft wreckage, they could not find any information to identify wreckage at the crash site. The remains also could not be identified at the time and were interred as unknowns in the U.S. Military Cemetery in Naples.
The Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed the unknowns from the cemetery in June 2022 and transferred them to the DPAA laboratory where scientists used modern forensic techniques to identify Charles Smith.
Kyle Smith said members of his family sent DNA samples to the DPAA years ago in hopes of finding their missing relative. They were notified this spring that his remains were identified and would be returning home.
Charles Smith is the second Henderson County man who went missing during World War II to be identified after the local VFW about a year ago began a project to locate all the community’s soldiers who went missing in action.
The DPAA identified the remains of Luther Rhodes last year after the VFW, through the office of U.S. Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina, encouraged the agency to prioritize locating the Marine from Edneyville who went missing during the battle for Guadalcanal in 1942.
Rhodes remains were located last fall and buried in a church cemetery in Edneyville in March with his younger brother, Marvin, and other extended family members, veterans and community members looking on.
Bob Johnson, a retired U.S. Army major and commander of Henderson County’s Hedrick-Rhodes VFW Post 5206, leads the post’s efforts to find the remains of local soldiers who are missing in action. He has also recently reached out to other VFW posts in the mountains and across the state to encourage them to mount similar efforts to find missing soldiers from their communities.
Johnson spoke at a state meeting of VFW posts in Greensboro on Oct. 3.
“I told the leaders of VFW posts across the state about our post 5206’s MIA search and how they could follow our lead to find MIAs in their service areas across the state,” he said. “The talk was well received and a number of post leaders told me they would start a search for MIAs like Hendersonville’s post 5206 did.”
Johnson said he has also committed to working with other VFW posts in Western North Carolina to help them locate MIAs from their service areas.
He said he hopes to draw national attention to the effort.
“The biggest thing is I wanted to get the VFW at the state and national level involved,” he said. “I wanted to show what we were doing.”
Johnson’s background in sorting out discrepancies and mislabeling in military cemeteries gave him unique insight in how to go about finding MIAs.
He knew from his previous work with the military resolving gravestone errors at Arlington National Cemetery that sometimes records do not match headstones at military cemeteries, leaving questions about the identity of bodies.
Johnson also knew that the DPAA could likely find the remains of missing soldiers if the agency had DNA to test against the remains of unknown soldiers from World War II being held in military cemeteries in the Pacific and in Europe.
He put his knowledge and ideas about how to find missing soldiers to the test when he began trying to locate soldiers missing from Henderson County.
Johnson and others at the VFW who researched MIAs as a hobby first set about determining which local soldiers missing in action could likely be identified if the DPAA had DNA to test against the unknown remains held in military cemeteries.
They also began trying to locate next of kin who for those soldiers who could provide the necessary DNA.
Encouraging the DPAA to focus on soldiers from Henderson County was also important in the VFW’s work, he said.
Rhodes was the first MIA from Henderson County the VFW pushed for the DPAA to locate.
Johnson said he also believed the remains of Smith and Brack B. McCraw, a U.S. Army Corporal from Henderson County who died as a prisoner of war in the Philippines during World War II, could be located. Kenneth Lancaster, a U.S. Army Sgt. First Class who went missing during the Vietnam War, is also among the soldiers Johnson thinks the DPAA could locate.
Other MIAs, including sailors who died when their ships sank in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans during World War II, are not likely to be found unless those shipwrecks are located, he said.
For Johnson, who is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, identifying as many missing soldiers as possible is a way the VFW can uphold the military’s ethos of leaving no one behind.
The local VFW had created a Wall of Honor in recent years and shadow boxes honoring the county’s veterans including those missing in action, but Johnson wanted to do more.
“I didn’t think honoring them was enough. I said, ‘I’m going to find these people,’” he said.
Kyle Smith said he also hopes other families like his will have he chance to bury their relatives during services in their hometowns.
“It’s wonderful we can find people missing in action for so long,” he said.