Shirley Finn has been waiting a lifetime to hear definitive news of her brother.

She was not yet born when the P-38 Lightning piloted by 2nd Lt. Allan Knepper, of Lewiston, took a direct hit from flak and crashed on the Italian island of Sicily. His body wasn’t recovered from the World War II theater and Knepper has been listed as missing in action for eight decades.

His loss tore a lasting hole in the family. Finn recalls having to whisper questions about her brother.

“It would make my dad cry every time he was mentioned. He never got over it,” said Finn, who lives in Clarkston.

Answers

Finn has long wanted to know more about Knepper’s death and wearabouts. Her wait is nearing an end. The Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency announced earlier this month that Knepper was “accounted for” last August.

Little else is publicly known about the discovery of his crash site and possible recovery, but Finn and author Robert Richardson, of Spokane, expect to have answers soon. The DPAA has tentatively told Finn they will visit the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley to give her a full report as soon as next month. She hopes it will bring closure.

“I’ve always wanted to know he was in a good place,” she said. “I’d like to bring him home and put him in our plot in Lewiston.”

Heavy fire

On July 10, 1943, the U.S. and Great Britain launched an attack on Sicily from northern Africa. According to a DPAA report, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s government was wobbling. The Allies hoped to capture the island to further weaken the fascist regime and to open up new shipping routes to better supply the war effort.

Knepper’s squadron was deployed with the mission of disrupting German and Italian air and ground forces so that Allied troops could make landing on Sicily. According to the report, Knepper took off on a strafing mission from El Bathan Airfield in Tunisia at 2:50 p.m. that day. Once over the island, the fighters encountered heavy anti-aircraft fire and another pilot reported seeing Knepper’s plane veer skyward, roll and then plunge to the ground. Knepper was not seen to have bailed out and he was presumed to have died in the crash.

Immediately after the war, the military attempted to find the crash site. But there was confusion as to its precise location and Knepper was eventually declared nonrecoverable.

Volunteers

Richardson’s father, Leonard, was friends with Knepper in Lewiston. They both volunteered and both would be the victim of air crashes. Leonard Richardson, a navigator, was the sole survivor of a crash on a remote island in the Pacific theater. While reading his father’s memoirs, Robert Richardson became interested in Knepper and wrote about his life and service in “The Jagged Edge of Duty: A Fighter Pilot’s World War II.”

His research included interviewing Finn and making contact with Sicilians like Salvatore Fagone. Together, Richardson, Fagone and others developed enough leads for DPAA officials to conduct multiple searches on the island over the last several years, culminating with discovery of the crash site near Caltagirone, Italy.

Home

Finn is anxious for the full details about her brother’s death and recent discovery, and to find out when the military will deliver it.

“I was hoping it would be soon. It’s been a long time and I’m 80,” she said. “I would like to have it done before I’m gone because I’m the last sibling left.”

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273.