SSgt Charles McMackin, MIA since Ploesti raid 1943

[DavidIsby]

On August 17, 2020, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Staff Sergeant Charles G. McMackin, missing from World War II.
Staff Sergeant McMackin entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Massachusetts and joined the 68th Bombardment Squadron April 10, 1942 and arrived in the European Theater of Operations via the Queen Mary September 5, 1942. He was a bombardier abord a B-24D Liberator nicknamed “Satan’s Hell Cats”. Staff Sergeant McMackin shot down his first German plane, a Focke-Wulf FW 190, on January 27, 1943. By August 1, 1943 the entire crew of “Satan’s Hell Cats” had completed their tour of duty.
On August 1, 1943 “Satan’s Hell Cats” took off from an airstrip in the Libyan desert to participate in Operation Tidal Wave, a raid on Axis oil refineries at Ploiesti, Romania. The bombers flew extremely low to avoid detection, but encountered intense anti-aircraft fire over the target and many aircraft were lost. “Satan’s Hell Cats” was hit by enemy fire and was seen to skim the tops of nearby trees before crashing and exploding approximately two miles from Ploiesti.
According to German pilot, Willie Steinman who was flying an ME-109 that pursued “Satan’s Hell Cats”. “The American machine guns were spatting all around,” Steinman said. Picking up the ship which was “about 150 feet from the ground, I attacked from the rear,” said Steinman, adding “I cut back on the throttle, slowed her with the flaps, and gave the Liberator a good raking from wing tip to wing tip. I could see tracers walking across the with of the plane and flames coming out from everywhere.”
All nine crew members were lost in the crash, including SSG McMackin. Civilians recovered numerous bodies from nearby crash sites and interred them in the Bolovan cemetery in Ploiesti. After the war American investigators recovered many of these fallen airmen and reinterred at the Ardennes Cemetery and the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery. SSG McMackin was unable to be identified following the war, however, his remains were buried as unknowns. In 2017, DPAA began exhuming unknown remains associated with the raid on Ploiesti, and analysts were able to associate one set of remains with SSG McMackin using DNA analysis. Further laboratory analyses and circumstantial evidence helped analysts eventually identify these remains as Staff Sergeant Charles G. McMackin.
Staff Sergeant McMackin is recorded on the Tablets of the missing at the Florence American Cemetery in Impruneta. He will be buried April 14, 2022 in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

[Teresa Maria]

May he rest in peace.