News

Remains of second WWII MIA back home after 83 years

An honor guard from the U.S. Army on Friday evening transferred the remains of a Henderson County soldier missing since World War II from a Delta Airlines flight to a hearse waiting on the tarmac at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport. The remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Charles R. Smith will be buried in Hendersonville on Sunday.

By Amy McCraw, Published: October 24, 2026

The remains of U.S. Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Charles R. Smith returned home Friday, 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 were flown on a Delta Airlines flight from Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska to Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport. A U.S. Army honor guard performed a dignified transfer of the casket carrying Smith’s remains from the airplane to a hearse on the tarmac. The hearse carried the casket to Hendersonville, where Smith will be buried on Sunday.
The federal government’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified Smith’s remains on May 29.
Smith was born in Henderson County, the son of William Thomas Smith and Rachel Inez McCall. He lived in the county before moving to Charlotte sometime in about 1941 to work at an airfield. He enlisted in 1942. Smith came from a family of military service, including those serving in WWI, WWII, and the Korean War. During WWII, Smith’s five siblings served in the military with all but Charles Ray returning safely.
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. Family members provided DNA the DPAA used in their work.
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.