https://dpaa.secure.force.com/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000001EhNEmEAN

On May 1, 2009, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Staff Sergeant Leland D. Price, missing from World War II.

Staff Sergeant Price, who entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Ohio, served in the 424th Bombardment Squadron, 307th Bombardment Group (Heavy). On September 1, 1944, he was serving as a gunner aboard a B-24J Liberator (serial number 42-73453) when it took off from Wakde Airfield in the Palau Islands on a bombing mission against enemy targets at Koror. During the mission, the aircraft was hit by Japanese anti-aircraft fire and crashed into the sea between the Koror and Babeldaub islands, killing SSG Price. Enemy presence in the area prevented recovery operations for this Liberator at the time, and SSG Price was not recovered. Postwar search efforts for the aircraft's wreckage and its missing crew members were also unsuccessful. In 2004, JPAC was contacted by the independent investigative organization Bent Prop Project that discovered aircraft wreckage on the ocean floor near the Liberator's suspected crash site. A joint JPAC/U.S. Navy investigative dive team recovered human remains from this crash site and used modern forensic techniques to eventually identify SSG Price

Staff Sergeant Price is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

Leland D Price