News came from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) to Marla Andrews, the next of kin, on Friday, July 27, 2018. After an unbearably long wait, it was finally confirmed. The remains of her father, Captain Lawrence E. Dickson (1920-1944), one of 27 Tuskegee Airmen previously unaccounted for from the Second World War, had been identified.

The National WWII Museum is proud to have been a partner with DPAA, the University of New Orleans, and the University of Innsbruck in resolving the case of Captain Dickson. Time is a ruthless foe for families with missing loved ones. Partnerships and cooperation across oceans and continents, however, are bringing results for many of these families whose hopes languished for decades.

The story of Lawrence Dickson, a member of the Army Air Force 100th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group, is full of heartbreak. On December 23, 1944, he and two others, all flying P-51D Mustangs with the distinctive red tails, escorted a P-38 Lightning on a reconnaissance mission to Prague. It was Dickson’s 68th mission with his P-51, nicknamed “Peggin’.” During the journey back to base at Ramitelli, Italy, his fighter experienced severe engine trouble. One of his wingmen, 2nd Lt. Robert L. Martin, last saw the canopy of Dickson’s aircraft jettison and the plane invert over northeastern Italy, near its border with Austria. Yet Martin never saw a parachute. The Mustang descended toward the snow-covered forests of the Alps below and vanished.

After the American Graves Registration Service did not succeed in finding his remains, Dickson was classified as “non-recoverable” in 1949. His widow, Phyllis, and daughter, Marla, only two when her father died, did not relinquish hope that, one day, he would have a proper resting place. They simply refused to give up. A turn in the case came when historian Joshua Frank, working for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), DPAA’s predecessor, created a database of lost military aircraft in Italy from World War II. From his examination of Dickson’s file, Frank thought the area around the small south Austrian town of Hohenthurn, right on the Italian border, was the most promising possibility for a crash site. Roland Domanig, a local investigator hired by JPAC, traveled to Hohenthurn in April 2012. There, he met Hermann Kandutsch, whose mother witnessed the crash of a P-51. Having, as a child, played around the wreckage of the fighter, Kandutsch knew just where to take Domanig. Good fortune reinforced exacting research.

Once a location was determined, the hard work of organizing an excavation followed. With the founding of DPAA in early 2015, the successor to JPAC, the question arose about forming partnerships to deal with the almost 73,000 unrecovered service members from the Second World War. In the fall of 2016, DPAA’s Office of Strategic Partnerships inquired about collaborating with The National World War II Museum and the University of New Orleans. The Museum, with its expert staff and its extensive archival holdings and oral-history collection, made a natural partner. UNO was also a natural partner, with its International Summer Study program at the University of Innsbruck in Austria and excellent archaeological field schools. Moreover, the Museum and UNO have long, deep ties. The Museum’s founding president & CEO, Gordon H. "Nick" Mueller, was professor of history, dean, and vice chancellor at UNO.

After settling arrangements with DPAA, Dr. D. Ryan Gray, an assistant professor in UNO’s Department of Anthropology and an expert in urban archaeology, led a field team to the Hohenthurn area in mid-July 2017. Staying in nearby Villach, Dr. Gray brought a dozen UNO students with him, including two current Museum employees: Claire DeLucca, Research Assistant in President & CEO Stephen Watson’s office, and Brittany Waggener, a Travel Assistant in the Museum’s Department of Travel & Sales. Irene Ziegler from the UNO International Summer School set up flights, lodgings, and meals for the group. Complementing the team were two students working with Dr. Harald Stadler from the Institute of Archaeology at the University of Innsbruck. Dr. Stadler would also help with all of the logistics (getting permission from the property owner, securing equipment) needed to ensure a smooth operation.