The remains of two New Jersey heroes killed in action – one during World War II and the other in Vietnam – were finally brought home to New Jersey in December.
U.S. Army 2nd Lt. William Scott of Clifton was killed in action in 1943 while serving in the 68th Bombardment Squadron, 44th Bombardment Group of the 8th Air Force.
In the summer of 1943, the B-24 Liberator bomber on which Scott served as navigator was hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire and crashed. The plane was completing a bombing run on the oil fields and refineries in Ploiesti, Romania, just north of Bucharest. The oil from these refineries was critical to the Axis armies.
U.S. Army Warrant Officer Albert Trudeau was serving with the 68th Aviation Company, 52nd Aviation Battalion, 17th Aviation Group. In October of 1971, Trudeau was piloting a CH-47B Chinook helicopter when it went down into the waters of the South China Sea near Cam Ranh Bay due to bad weather.
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Scott’s remains were not identified after the war. His, and other unidentified remains were buried as Unknowns in the hero section of a military cemetery in Bolovan, Romania. The remains were later removed and reinterred at the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium.
In 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) began exhuming the unidentified remains of American military personnel believed to be associated with the air campaign in which Scott’s Liberator participated.
The remains were sent to a laboratory in Nebraska where scientists used anthropological and Y chromosome DNA analysis to identify Scott’s remains.
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Recovering Trudeau’s remains at the bottom of the South China Sea was considerably more challenging. The remains of four of Trudeau’s comrades from the Chinook helicopter were recovered in a search and rescue operation shortly after the crash but subsequent recovery efforts in 1994 and 2001 were unsuccessful at locating other remains.
A very substantial recovery effort in early 2024 excavated more than 336 square meters of the underwater site and recovered equipment and remains believed to be Trudeau’s.
The remains were turned over to the DPAA laboratory for identification. Using anthropological and dental analysis, material and circumstantial evidence and mitochondrial DNA analysis, scientists confirmed that Trudeau’s remains had been found.
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Scott was buried with full honors at the Brigadier General William Doyle cemetery in North Hanover Township on December 9.
Trudeau will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery at a date yet to be determined.
