Lt. Gordon Eugene Thompson

After 81 years, Lt. Gordon Eugene Thompson is about to arrive at his final resting place.
One of more than 81,000 service members from World War II, the Marine fighter pilot from Moccasin who went missing at Guadalcanal was accounted for last year. Thompson will be buried in his hometown the week after Memorial Day.
Thompson was born in Moccasin on June 15, 1920 and grew up on the family farm. A talented student and rancher, Thompson won numerous junior livestock judging awards at ages as young as 10. His talents only grew, as, according to the Great Falls Tribune, he won first place in beef cattle, dairy cattle, milking shorthorns, and draft horse team at the 26th annual Moccasin picnic in 1935. He was president of his local FFA chapter and elected "state farmer" for the organization in 1937. He graduated from Moccasin High School that same year at the top of his nine-person class, giving the valedictorian's address at his graduation ceremony on May 19.
Thompson continued his education, enrolling in Montana State College, where he majored in agriculture. He helped his college's grain judging team take first place at the 1939 Pacific International Livestock Exposition in Portland, placing third individually in the competition. His stellar academic performance earned him induction into Phi Kappa Phi, an academic honors fraternity, in 1940. Prior to graduating in 1941, he also earned his civilian pilot license through a training course offered by the college.
According to research and documents published by Missing Marines, an independent research project dedicated to recovering World War II service members who went missing in action, Thompson would go on to enlist in the Navy's flight training program in August, four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' official entry into World War II. Thompson's selective service card from that year showed a man of about six feet tall, weighing 160 pounds with blue eyes, brown hair, and freckles.
After spending around eight months in Miami for flight training school, Thompson accepted an appointment as Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps on April 11, 1942. In July, he was assigned to the "Bengals" of the Marine Fighter Squadron 224 (VMF-224), new fighter attack squadron that had been commissioned only two months prior. Following further training in Hawaii, Thompson and the rest of his squadron were deployed to the Solomon Islands, arriving on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk August 28. Thompson's fighter was then loaded onto the carrier USS Long Island. On August 30, VMF-224 flew into Henderson Field, the Guadalcanal airbase which the Marines had captured from the Japanese earlier that month and held in the face of heavy enemy counterattack.
The squadron began operations the next day. On August 31, 1942, seventeen F4F-4 fighters of VMF-224 took off from Henderson Field at 11 a.m. for a combat patrol, with Thompson among them. Despite reports of enemy aircraft, the patrol encountered no Japanese planes and headed back to Henderson Field, but, after landing, discovered that three airmen, Thompson and fellow Second Lieutenants Charles E. Bryans and Richard Amerine, had not returned. Thompson was listed as Missing in Action that same day.
A week later, Amerine made it back to a Marine outpost, reporting that his plane's oxygen system had failed around 27,000 feet in the air. Amerine bailed out of his aircraft, landed in the water and swam several miles to shore. Afterwards, he hiked for 50 miles, killing four Japanese soldiers before arriving to safety half-starved.
Amerine's report led the Marines to attribute Thompson's and Bryans' disappearance to the F4F-4's faulty oxygen system as well. In a letter to Thompson's family in December, Captain Darrell Irwin of Marine Aircraft Group 23, which included the Bengals, wrote: "No one actually saw Tommy crash. He left the squadron formation at a high altitude and disappeared. He may have crashed or parachuted in enemy territory. It is possible that he could have fallen into enemy hands and taken prisoner. It is also possible that he could have parachuted into the jungle and may still be there, but he should have returned by this time and therefore this is not probable It is my personal opinion that after this long a time, Tommy must have been killed that day or taken prisoner, and the latter is the least possible."
The pilots and crew members of VMF-224 played a key role in the Allied victory at Guadalcanal, with Japanese forces withdrawing from the area in February, 1943 after six months of fighting. The Guadalcanal campaign marked a turning point in the Pacific Theater, as the Empire of Japan ceased major offensive operations in its aftermath. The Bengals later took part in the Marshall Islands campaign, as well as in the Battle of Okinawa, the last land battle of World War II.
The Marine Corps designated Thompson dead in January, 1946, five months after the conclusion of the war. A historical report on Thompson issued in 2022 by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), a Department of Defense Agency whose mission is to "provide the fullest possible accounting for our missing personnel to their families and the nation," detailed the Marine Corps' efforts to locate Thompson.
Multiple investigations during the war had been unable to locate Thompson's plane. He had not been found in enemy prisoner of war camps, nor had any trace of him been discovered through documents or returned prisoners. A Purple Heart was sent to his family in Moccasin.
Thompson was posthumously promoted to First Lieutenant June 11, 1947. From 1947 to 1949, the American Graves Registration Service searched Guadalcanal and nearby islands for the bodies of missing service members, but no trace of Thompson was found. He, along with Bryans, were officially declared "non-recoverable" in 1949, presumed lost at sea.
On August 3, 2022, the DPAA announced that Thompson was, indeed, accounted for. Five years earlier, DPAA historians identified three potential crashed F4F planes that had likely crashed between Henderson Field and Mount Austen on Guadalcanal. An investigative team was sent to the island, where they found further wreckage and conducted interviews.
In 2018, local resident Celestine Baba presented Thompson's ID tags to DPAA personnel on site after locating them in his garden in a small valley between Henderson Field and Mount Austen, near a wreckage site. On July 23 of that year, a DPAA investigative team went to Baba's garden and found wreckage consistent with an F4F on the valley's western slope, along with bone material scattered on the eastern slope. Through DNA testing, the DPAA was able to identify Thompson.
According to the agency's website, DPAA scientists use Autosomal Short Tandem Repeat and Y chromosomal STR tests to analyze DNA from both cell nuclei and mitochondria. Those processes produce a statistical probability that remains are biologically related to reference DNA, which the DPAA had requested from both the maternal and paternal sides of Thompson's family in 2018. Last summer, a DNA match was confirmed, and the DPAA notified Thompson's family of the news.
According to Ralph Mihlfeld of Creel Funeral Home in Lewistown, Thompson's remains were sent to Hawaii, where he awaited transport to Central Montana for burial after eight decades of being unaccounted for.
A graveside service with military honors will be held for Thompson at the Moccasin Cemetery on Wednesday, June 7 at 2 p.m. Thompson will be laid to rest next to his parents, Lachlan and Ita, with his sister, Jeanne Thompson Lambley of Hooker, OK, receiving his flag, along with other surviving family members. Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-224 will also hold a flyover in honor of Thompson.
In his same letter to the family in 1942, Capt. Irwin wrote of Thompson: "I should like further to say that the entire squadron considered Tommy one of our best flyers, an excellent squadron officer, and a brave and good boy. We were proud to have him with us "