Stays of teenage WWII sailor killed on ship that hit underwater mine recognized 8 many years later

An 18-year-old Navy seaman who was killed aboard a U.S. destroyer throughout World Struggle II has been accounted for greater than 80 years after his dying, army officers mentioned Tuesday. 

U.S. Navy Reserve Seaman 2nd Class Jerome M. Mullaney, 18, was assigned to the destroyer USS Glennon in the summertime of 1944, the Protection POW/MIA Accounting Company mentioned in a information launch. The Glennon participated in D-Day on June 6, 1944. Two days after the invasion, it struck an underwater mine off the coast of France. The ship turned trapped and couldn’t be towed to security earlier than it was struck by a German artillery barrage on June 10. 

The ship sank after being hit by the German barrage. Mullaney and 24 different sailors have been recorded as lacking. Mullaney was declared non-recoverable in Might 1949, just below 5 years after the ship’s sinking. His title was recorded on the Partitions of the Lacking at Cambridge American Cemetery in England. He was awarded the Purple Coronary heart, based on an obituary printed in late August. 

After World Struggle II led to 1945, the American Graves Registration Command started efforts to recuperate lacking American service members who had died throughout in fight. The company performed dozens of searches off France’s coast, the DPAA mentioned. By 1951, the company had recognized the stays of 5 sailors from the USS Glennon. 

In 1957, salvagers in St. Marie du Mont, France pulled items of the USS Glennon to shore. The items have been damaged down for scrap. An area resident discovered human stays in a big part of wreckage from the entrance portion of the ship, the DPAA mentioned. American officers from the Military mausoleum in Frankfurt, Germany, then took possession of the stays and designated them as X-9296. Efforts to determine the stays failed, they usually have been interred on the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium in March 1959.

In 2021, DPAA historians started new efforts to account for the sailors who died aboard the USS Glennon. In August 2022, the X-9296 stays have been exhumed from the Belgian cemetery and transferred to the DPAA’s laboratory. Analysis together with dental and anthropological evaluation, in addition to mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA evaluation, recognized the stays as Mullaney’s in March 2025. 

Mullaney’s obituary mentioned he was certainly one of 10 kids. All of his siblings have died, however he has a number of surviving nieces, nephews and cousins. The obituary mentioned his funeral could be held in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. He was set to be buried close to his mother and father, the obituary mentioned. 

A rosette may also be positioned subsequent to his title on the Partitions of the Lacking to point he has been accounted for, the DPAA mentioned. 

“This may deliver closure for our household,” Mullaney’s niece, Mary Louise Brambilla, instructed the army publication Stars and Stripes. “He’ll lastly be coming residence.”