The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced on January 29, 2025, that U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Franklin H. McKinney has been accounted for. McKinney, a pilot from Rhode Island, was 21 years old when he disappeared during a World War II reconnaissance mission in 1944.

McKinney took off from a U.S. base in Yunnanyi, China, on November 5, 1944. He was flying a reconnaissance mission over Burma and Thailand, but no contact was made with his F5E-2-LO Lightning aircraft after it departed the base, and he never returned from the mission. No evidence of a crash was discovered along his route immediately after the war.

A wartime report from the Royal Thai Air Force Museum indicated that a plane was struck by lightning on the day McKinney disappeared. This report stated that the aircraft exploded and crashed in a wooded area in Thailand's Lampang Province. McKinney was part of the 35th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron, 14th Air Force, which was nicknamed the "Redhawks." The Air Force stated the squadron was known for missions that "helped turn the tide of the war in China."

Third-party researchers located a crash site in a rice paddy in the region in 2018 and associated it with McKinney's aircraft. Teams from the DPAA investigated the site further in 2019 and 2021. A recovery team excavated the site in 2022, uncovering possible human remains.

The remains were transported to the DPAA laboratory, where modern forensic techniques were employed to identify them as belonging to McKinney. His name had previously been engraved on the Tablets of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines. Following this identification, McKinney's family will receive a briefing from the DPAA, and a rosette will be engraved next to his name on the Walls of the Missing. The DPAA will also arrange for McKinney to be laid to rest with full military honors.