More than 80 years after he took off from an airfield in China, a US Army Air Force pilot is going home.
The route back to the United States for 1st Lt. Franklin McKinney has been long and paved by the term paper of a US Air Force Academy cadet; the friendship of a Thai air force officer; the remarkably clear memories of a villager in her mid-90s; the curiosity of an American expat; and, incredibly, a massive flood in Bangkok.
Remains recovered from a rice paddy in northern Thailand have been confirmed as those of McKinney, who disappeared while flying an F-5E – the reconnaissance version of the twin-engine, twin-tail P-38 Lightning fighter – on November 5, 1944,…