World War II airman Max Dailey laid to rest near Charles City, 81 years after his death

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

U.S. Army Air Corps Second Lt. Max Eugene Dailey was laid to rest in a small rural cemetery southeast of Charles City shortly after noon Wednesday – 80 years, 10 months and 11 days after his death in Romania in World War II.

His remains had been among unknown bodies exhumed from a cemetery in Europe several years ago by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, and had been identified a year ago by being linked through DNA with living relatives, including his nephew, Bill Mead of Charles City.

Master Sergeant Brian Pappaducas, the Iowa Army National Guard’s casualty operations officer, was in Charles City Wednesday as part of a dozen men and women soldiers making up the Army National Guard honor guard for Dailey’s burial service.

The honor guard – six pallbearers and three soldiers in a rifle firing party, plus their commanders – executed a precisely choreographed ceremony with each movement rigid and rigorously rehearsed, from marching the casket to the gravesite, to the elaborate folding of the U.S. flag and its presentation to Bill Mead.

At the end of the service the brass from the nine rifle shots were also presented to Mead.

Pappaducas said such ceremonies are important, both to the family of the deceased and to the armed forces.

“We essentially want to provide support to the families of our service members. In an instance like this, we have a service member who was missing and died in action,” the master sergeant said. “Once we identify that soldier and bring them home, this is the last chapter. This completes the story.

“It’s our honor and our obligation to bring those individuals back, do so honorably and give them their final rest,” he said.

Part of the gravesite service included a flyover of Riverton Cemetery by four World War II-era military or military-like planes.

Northeast Iowa Regional Airport Manager Bill Kyle identified the aircraft and their crews as the P-51C Mustang “Tuskegee Airmen” piloted by Doug Rozendaal with Larry Brickey; a T-34 piloted by Dan Sokolowski and another T-34 piloted by Mark Holt with Terrance Prochaska; and a Navion piloted by Adam Glowaski.

The P-51 performed a victory roll over the cemetery, Kyle said.

Hayden Heyer, a 2024 Charles City High School graduate, wearing his Eagle Scout uniform, played taps.

The procession from the church to the cemetery was escorted by members of the Patriot Guard Riders and Charles City and Floyd County law enforcement and other public safety vehicles.

Charles City Fire Rescue and the Floyd Volunteer Fire Department crossed ladder truck ladders across South Grand Avenue by the Charles City fire station, suspending a flag over the route the motorcade traveled.

Max Dailey was the navigator on a 10-man B-24 crew, one of almost 180 of the “Liberator” bombers that had taken off Sunday, Aug. 1, 1943, from airfields near Benghazi, Libya, in northern Africa, on a daring raid meant to destroy fuel refineries and storage facilities near Ploesti, Romania, that were vital to the Nazi war effort.

Dailey, along with 224 other airmen out of the more than 1,700 who had taken off that day, were killed in action, many of them like Dailey unidentified and buried in Romanian graves marked “unknown.”

Dailey’s family – his father, two sisters and his fiance – were notified he had been killed in action a couple of months after his death, but his family never new details about what had happened, or where he might be buried.

“Cases like this are very rewarding because, again, for the family, it’s the end of the story,” Pappaducas said. “In the military we want to make sure that we support the families any way that we can, whether it’s a case like this, where it’s someone that’s been missing for 80 years and finally brought home, or it’s a currently serving service member. We provide support there, also.

“They’re part of the military family. Not just the service member, but their families are part of the military family,” he said.

The funeral service Wednesday morning was held at First Congregational Church in Charles City with Pastor John Tunnicliff officiating.

Richard Brown of Minneapolis, representing the descendants of the 93rd Bombardment Group, recounted the story of the Ploesti raid – dubbed Operation Tidal Wave – and its dire result.

Dailey’s relatives who were able to attend the service were nephew Bill Mead and his wife, Elaine, of Charles City, Sue Scott from Tigard, Oregon, Brian Mead from Goodyear, Arizona, and Dailey’s great nephews Nick Mead and Nate and Cady Mead of Charles City.

Pappaducas said identifying missing service members is a long process.

“There’s a written record of ‘here’s where this individual is recovered.’ You know the approximate date that they died, the battle. But because they’re in a grave and they weren’t identified when they were buried it takes time to build that historical record,” he said.

“They’ll get to a point to where, OK, we think this is one of these four or six or eight individuals. At that point they’ll do the genealogical study, find the descendants, and then reach out to the families and ask for DNA sampling to do the identification,” Pappaducas said.

He said the Army has about one or two long-unidentified soldiers returned to Iowa each year.

“So far this calendar year this is the second one,” he said. “We had a soldier – infantry soldier – that was identified and came back to Anamosa about a month and a half ago.”