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ALBANY, N.Y. — The Pentagon is launching efforts to solve a baffling Second World War mystery: whether dozens of U.S. sailors listed as missing from a ship disaster were actually recovered and buried all along as unknowns in a New York cemetery.

More than 130 victims of the USS Turner’s 1944 explosion and sinking near New York Harbor are still officially missing. But Second World War researcher Ted Darcy found papers last year indicating at least four of them were buried as unknowns in a Long Island military cemetery. He believes the rest could be there too.

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After The Associated Press initially reported on Darcy’s findings in November, the Pentagon office responsible for recovering and identifying the nation’s war dead said only that the records that could confirm exactly how many of the Turner’s sailors are buried in the cemetery were missing.

But in recent days, the Defence POW/MIA Accounting Agency said it is now “taking the steps to send out inquiries and conduct archival research” to try to locate the files associated with the Turner unknowns buried in the cemetery in Farmingdale on Long Island.