https://dpaa.secure.force.com/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000001EhNDtEAN

On June 30, 2009, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Flight Officer William B. Simpson, missing from World War II.

Flight Officer Simpson, who entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from North Carolina, served in the 424th Bombardment Squadron, 307th Bombardment Group (Heavy). On September 1, 1944, he was the copilot of 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 FLT O Simpson. Enemy presence in the area prevented recovery operations for this Liberator at the time, and postwar search efforts for the wreckage of the aircraft and its missing crew were 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 remains from this crash site which were later identified as those of FLT O Simpson

Flight Officer Simpson is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines.

William B Simpson