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Remember...Jay Ross Manown Jr.
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Jay Ross Manown Jr. was born January 19, 1918, at Kingwood, Preston County, West Virginia, to parents Jay Ross Manown and Ella Avis Craig Manown. He had one sister, Elaine B. Manown (married name: Shonk). According to the Rebecca Mason Family Tree on Ancestry.com and the 1930 Federal Census, the family resided in Kingwood in 1930, but by 1931 they were in Morgantown. The 1940 census shows that the 22-year-old Jay had completed his second year of college.
According to Rick Steelhammer's article in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Jay attended West Virginia University, where he was a mining engineering student. He enlisted in the Navy Reserve on July 15, 1940. As a seaman second class, he entered flight school and became an aviation cadet. Commissioned as an ensign in May 1941, he served as a flight instructor. But with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, he entered combat status. ("Missing Hero Back Home," 9-10 November 1924.) Steelhammer describes how the events that led to Lieutenant Manown's death unfolded:
On the morning of Sept. 10, 1944, the 26-year-old Navy lieutenant and his two-man crew lifted off the flight deck of the USS Enterprise and flew toward Malakal Island, where their orders called for them to bomb Japanese shore installations and ships in the harbor. Their mission was part of a plan to reduce Japanese resistance during the U.S. invasion of Peleliu and other nearby islands that would begin in five days.As the island came into view, Manown, who had been flying combat missions in the Pacific for two years and served as second in command of his squadron, targeted a Japanese freighter and began a bombing run. The Grumman TBM-IC Avenger flown by Manown was the largest single-engine aircraft flown by any nation during World War II. It carried a payload of either four 500-pound bombs or a single 1-ton torpedo—enough ordnance to sink an enemy aircraft carrier.
According to a Navy account of the mission, Manown's aircraft was fired upon and received unsustainable damage. It was last seen crashing into the water near Malakal Island. Lt. Manown and his crew (gunner Anthony DiPetta and radioman Wilbur Mitts) were at the time declared missing and one year later declared dead. Although the Graves Registration Service conducted extensive research after the war, it appeared that the crew's remains were "non-recoverable."
Fast forward to 2024. DNA can be a remarkable technology. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced in May 23 that Lt. Manown's remains had been identified, and he would be returned to his family for burial. According to the DPAA,
Lieutenant Manown entered the U.S. Navy from Virginia and served in Torpedo Squadron 20. On September 10, 1944, he piloted a TBM-1 Avenger (Bureau Number 17018) that took off from the USS Enterprise for a strike mission against Japanese forces in the Palau Islands. The plane, with two other men on board, was last seen spinning violently before crashing into the water a few hundred feet from Malakal Island. Together with the rest of the crew, Lt Manown was lost in the crash. Efforts to recover his remains following the war were unsuccessful and he was declared non-recoverable. From 2003 - 2018, the BentProp Project, now known as Project Recover, a nonprofit organization that works to search for and recover missing Americans, and DPAA conducted six investigations which resulted in the identification of a site associated with the incident. Excavations in May 2019 by DPAA partner organization Ships of Exploration and Discovery Research and in September 2021 by Project Recover discovered remains and material evidence which were sent to a DPAA laboratory for further study. The laboratory analysis and the totality of the circumstantial evidence available established the remains as those of Lt Manown. (Personnel Profile, Service Member, Lt Jay Ross Manown Jr., 23 May 2024.)
Originally memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (Honolulu), Lt. Manown could now be interred with his family in Kingwood. Maplewood Cemetery, where he was buried on October 29, 2024, is just a few blocks from his childhood home. During his years of service, Jay Ross Manown Jr. had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Posthumously, he received the Purple Heart medal.
This article was by Patricia Richards McClure
December 2024
West Virginia Archives and History welcomes any additional information that can be provided about these veterans, including photographs, family names, letters and other relevant personal history.
