1st Lt. Math L. English
Missing In Action (MIA) Pilot B-25G Mitchell 42-64835
Interview with Jeff English, the great-nephew of Math English
What is your relation to Math
English?
"ML" was my great uncle on my
Father's side of the family. He was one of two Great Uncles in my
family that died on New Guinea during the war the other being Frank
Raley who was in the Signal Corps and was killed by a sniper while
stringing communications wire in late 1943. Frank was my Grandmothers
youngest brother and died about 9 months before "ML". Frank
had two other brothers who fought in the European theater and returned
home. I am the President and CEO of a natural gas marketing
and supply company which is a subsidiary of a major electric power
utility on the east coast and I am located in Washington, DC. I am
also a farmer and I grew up on a family farm in Georgia. I graduated
from college in Georgia and have worked in the Natural Gas industry
my whole professional career. Early in my career I worked for several
natural gas firms in the southeast in sales and marketing and later
as a industrial fuel consultant based in the Washington, DC area.
What did you learned about your uncle growing
up?
When I was a child in the 1960's I was told at
some point that I had two uncles that died during WWII and that they
both died on New Guinea. That they had both been close friends and
lived part time with my paternal Grand Parents helping with the family
farm operation in rural Southeast Georgia. The brief details of their
respective fates in the war were given to me then by my Dad who very
clearly remembered both ML and Frank and considered them to be almost like older brothers. For example, he remembers the family gatherings
when both Frank and ML departed for the Army and he remembered when
the family got notice on both Frank and ML. As a child it made quite
an impact on him. (After my Dad graduated from college he followed
ML's footsteps and joined the Air Force and began a career as a fighter
pilot and ended up as an instructor pilot in F-100's. He is now a
retired businessman, a farmer and a retired State Senator).
What I learned about ML and Frank growing up, they were both rural Georgia "farm boys" accustomed to a
hard work ethic and a simple quiet life and they both got caught up
in world history by joining the Army and they both quite literally
ended up on the other side of the world in a very short period of
time. Literally plowing a mule in the Georgia red clay and a year
later they were fighting Japanese soldiers in the Pacific. My Dad
remembers the day that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and remembers
that both ML and Frank were working together with my grandfather building
a pond dam on our property on the Sunday that it was announced that
the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and remembers the discussion
that occurred because of the event. Both of them were young, comical
guys and they loved fun and games. They enjoyed fishing and hunting
and their farming backgrounds gave them a working background with
heavy equipment and mechanics. They both joined the surge of patriotic
Americans that volunteered to join the services following the Japanese
attack. In ML's case he ended up with other boys on his crew that
were literally from across the country from CA, NY, PA and TX. They trained
together in the US and then joined the 38th Bomb Group in Australia
in 1943. Math English was married but I understand that his wife divorced him after he
had arrived in Australia following his stateside training. He had
no children.
How did you first become
interested in his loss aboard MIA case?
My family had quite a
high participation as patriots in the Revolutionary War, as Confederates
in the Civil War and as patriots in WWII. I am an amateur military
historian because of family research in all three areas. In WWII...
One from my Grandfathers family and three from my Grandmothers family.
I was told from the beginning that ML and his crew crash landed their
plane and that their whole squadron saw them standing on the wing
of their plane waving after the crash and that they disappeared and
were never found.
Because ML and his crew were never found the family
always wondered exactly what happened to him. They all assumed that
he and his crew died. But, how? It was simply a case of young American
boys lost to a fate unknown during war time. In the case of Frank
Raley, the family knew immediately that he had been killed and exactly
the circumstances of his death. After the war his body was returned
home.
I decided a couple of years ago that when I had time
I would thoroughly research ML's case and try to find the answers
to the questions that have been asked for almost 60 years. Living
in Washington, DC over the last couple of years has given me the exposure
and the time to research the information held in the National Archives
relating to ML and his crew and the 38th Bomb Group. I was dumbfounded
at the beginning of my research to learn that almost 80,000 American
service men and women are still listed as Missing in Action from WW2.
I still wonder how the United States could lose 80,000 people and
not be absolutely angry with our government for not doing more to
find them at the end of the war.
B-25G Mitchell 42-64835
Piloted by English force landed April 12, 1944
In ML's case, he and his crew were lost in New Guinea. His squadron
moved to another air base on another island and continued to fight
the Japanese. ML and his crew were not forgotten by their friends
and squadron mates many are still living today and several of whom
I have interviewed personally about this case. But at the time they
had a war to fight and couldn't dwell on their personal losses as
the campaign moved towards Tokyo.
Almost 60 years later I began to look into what is
being done today to find them. I found that nothing much goes on unless
someone begins to push for information and then it comes in bits and pieces and from all directions and from unexpected
locations. I found that most of the effort going into finding them
comes from people like Mike
Claringbould and John Douglas and family members like myself and Patricia
Gaffney and hundreds of others who are willing to take the time
to investigate the cases.
The U.S. Government has a great deal of information and
is very helpful if one knows the right questions to ask but one quickly
finds that their effort on MIA's is focused on soldiers
lost in Vietnam and there is no coordinated effort to find all soldiers
that are MIA. That is a symptom of time. Many vets from WW2 are dead,
most of the immediate next of kin of those missing from WWII are elderly
or dead or resigned to the fate of their loved ones during the war,
the war was a "popular war" but it is not fresh in our collective
national memory like Vietnam. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Although
I have to say that the staff at the US National Archives and Records
Administration and the US Air Force have been very helpful in steering
me in the right direction.
Mike
Claringbould has been a great friend and
a great source of information about ML's case. I met him after finding
him on the Pacific Wrecks. The same with John
Douglas, who I met through Mike. They are world recognized authorities
on the 5th Air Force, New Guinea wrecks and MIA cases. They, along
with Walt Deas and members of
the 38th Bomb Group Association have been instrumental in helping
this case along. It has been like putting a puzzle together each
of us had part of the information that was part of the whole story. I
told Mike about my search for information, he immediately quizzed
me about the information I had and realized that it pertained to a
case he had been long fascinated with, it is a bit like participating
in a treasure hunt, each person finds a clue and compares notes and
then we move to the next clue.
We are still working on final identification on the aircraft.
I hope the aircraft John Douglas knows about is ML's plane because
we have information on the particular crew from that particular aircraft
and the events surrounding their capture and probably execution at
the hands of the Japanese. If the plane turns out to be ML's then
the crew information is most likely to the ML's crew and the puzzle
becomes even more complete at that point.
My advice for anyone researching an MIA case is to start asking questions and never turn
down free help! Get the name rank and serial number for the missing
soldier and send for their Individual Deceased Personnel Form (IDPF) records
and then call me or someone else who has been down that road for help,
advice and mentoring on the eventual search for further information.
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