Jack Walker Published

Kingwood WWII Veteran Laid To Rest 80 Years After Dying In Combat

A collage of two images. On the left, a man in a Navy uniform smiles for a portrait photo against a solid backdrop. On the right, three men stand in uniform outside a military aircraft, staring into the camera.
Pictured on the left, Lt. Jay Manown, Jr. grew up in Preston County before entering the Navy. In the photo on the right, he stands in between AOM1c Anthony Di Petta and ARM1c Wilbur Mitts.
United States Navy
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A veteran from Kingwood, Preston County was buried at a cemetery in his hometown Tuesday, eight decades after he died in World War II combat on the South Pacific Palau islands.

Lieutenant Jay Manown, Jr. grew up in Preston County and studied mining engineering at West Virginia University before he entered the United States Navy as an aviator during World War II.

On Sept. 10, 1944, Manown and two other crew members — Archie Mitts of California and Anthony Di Petta of New Jersey — carried out an air strike mission against enemy targets in the Malakal Naval District of the Palau islands.

Witness testimony indicated that fire from the naval base struck Manown’s aircraft, causing it to crash, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. The agency works to recover missing or unaccounted for personnel from past military conflicts, and is overseen by the U.S. Department of Defense.

There were no indications that the three men survived the crash, according to the agency. But for decades military officials struggled to find their remains, which meant their families back home could never lay the men to rest.

This changed last year thanks to the work of Project Recover, a nonprofit organization that works “to search, locate, document, recover and repatriate” military service members missing in action, according to the organization’s website.

Over several years, Project Recover partnered with commercial diving and underwater research organizations to collect remains in the area of the plane’s crash.

Additional evidence collected in July 2023 allowed researchers to verify that remains recovered from the crash site belonged to Mitts and Di Petta.

Then, through anthropological, circumstantial and DNA analysis, researchers verified that a third set of remains belonged to Manown.

Manown’s remains were returned to his native West Virginia, where members of his family and the local community gathered for a burial service in Kingwood’s Maplewood Cemetery. Family members of Mitts and Di Petta also traveled to West Virginia for the ceremony.

Across the Mountain State, residents and organizations symbolically celebrated Manown’s homecoming, too.

Gov. Jim Justice ordered that all United States and West Virginia flags across the state be flown at half mast on Oct. 29 in memory of Manown.

“We’re so grateful to bring Lieutenant Manown back to West Virginia, where he will finally be laid to rest,” Justice said in a press release Monday. “His journey has been long, and now we have the honor of paying tribute to a true hero. It warms my heart to know he’s finally back where he belongs, surrounded by the love of his home. We are eternally grateful for his service and sacrifice.”