HOUSTON – Army Air Forces Flight Officer Judson B. Baskett, of Houston, will be buried Aug. 12, in his hometown after his remains were identified through dental and anthropological analyses.
Baskett was 25 on Nov. 27, 1945, when he was assigned to 1305th Army Air Force Base Unit, piloting a C-47B aircraft, en route from Singapore to Butterworth, Malaysia, to pick up cargo, along with two crew members.
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An hour after takeoff, the aircraft reported its position over Malacca, but failed to land as scheduled in Butterworth.
An air search conducted in December did not locate a crash site.
After over a year of trying to determine what happened, the crew was declared deceased on Nov. 28, 1946.
On April 13, 2010, an investigation team interviewed a local man who managed a logging area in the vicinity of the crash site.
When they went to the site, they found aircraft wreckage which exclusively correlated to the missing C-47 aircraft that Baskett was flying.
In 2012, the Malaysian Historical group recovered personal effects at the crash site.
In August and September of 2015, a joint Malaysian/U.S. team excavated the crash site, recovering possible remains.
Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died during the war.
For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving the country, visit the DPAA website here or call (703) 699-1420.