World War II Pilot’s Funeral Planned In St. Petersburg

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — A funeral is planned Friday for a World War II pilot whose remains were identified in August, according to a Florida Highway Patrol news release.

Second Lt. Gilbert Haldeen Myers will be buried and honored at 10 a.m. at Memorial Park Cemetery, 5750 49th Street N., St. Petersburg. His family will be present.

Myers' remains were accounted for Aug. 10.

He was assigned to the U.S. Air Force’s 381st Bombardment Squadron, 310th Bombardment Group in the Mediterranean Theater.

He was the co-pilot of a plane, a North American B-25 Mitchell Bomber, that was shot down over Sicily July 10, 1943, during a bombing mission against Sciacca Air Drome, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said.

As Myers plane released its bombs, anti-aircraft fire hit it, causing it to lose altitude. Witnesses saw one crew member bail out before the B-25 crashed and exploded about one and a half miles from the airfield, but there were no survivors or any record of a flier being taken prisoner, the agency said.

American Graves Registration Service officials learned that Italian civilians recovered Myers’ body and buried him in the Sciacca municipal cemetery.

American investigators identified Myers in 1943 and in a 1944 report, they indicated that they discovered the wreckage of his plane. There were no remains found with the wreckage.

An Italian civilian who saw the crash told the AGRS that German soldiers removed three bodies from the crash site, but didn’t know where the remains were brought.

In March 2017, a DPAA investigation team found the crash site in Sciacca using the coordinates provided by AGRS investigators in the 1940s.

In 2021 and 2022, the DPAA and partner organization personnel from the Cranfield University Recovery and Identification of Conflict Team returned to Sciacca, where they recovered additional plane wreckage pieces, as well as human remains from the crash site.

These remains were sent to the DPAA laboratory, which determined the remains belonged to Myers.
He is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery in Nettuno, Italy.