Suzie,
Attached is what information I could find about your uncle, Lt. Frank Hendricks, including what was reported at the time on his MIA on 25 December 1944, from the AFHRA microfilm roll that I have on the 100th BS.

Your uncle and my uncle, Roy Anderson, even flew together once, with Roy as Frank's co-pilot in early December; and Mickey's brother, George, flew at least once with Frank as well.  What I'm including are all missions from October through December 25, 1944, that list your uncle in an operations order.  There is a big gap in his record in November, which makes we wonder if he wasn't on detached service for a while in there; I know a number of crews were about this time, although the record doesn't say who or where.  But then again, maybe he wasn't - there was a rotation that often had a person not fly for a time, or maybe he was sick for a bit; plus the archived record in the AFHRA microfilm is incomplete, as not all mission reports, nor operations orders, were archived.

I'm sorry you lost your uncle in the Pacific.  It sounds like he was liked by the squadron, and that the squadron and group extended every effort they could to try to find him and his crew.  It sounds like weather was the culprit, which claimed several planes during the war. To lose a plane on Christmas I'm sure was disheartening at the time - not the type of news to want to report home.

If you send me your mailing address (using private mail or e-mail; please don't publically display it here), I have a few pages I printed from the microfilm to send you regarding the 25th of December.  They are hard to read, but nonetheless something for you, along with what I transcribed, until you can get official records (MACR and/or IDPF) from the government.

Kevin Anderson

Attachment(s)

hendricks_100thBS.txt (7.48 KB) - downloaded 37 times

Kevin
Thankyou  so much, for taking your time to research that for me, I didn't know where to begin.
I n the past few days I've found out more than they knew for 60 years. I tried calling the  NARA #  today, an hour wait I had to give up. But thanks for the suggestion on where to start.   ( Thanks to Mickey too)

Suzie

You are welcome, Suzie.  Two years ago I didn't know where to begin either, that is until I stumbled on this armyairforces.com site and learned through the kind help of others who answered my questions then.  I just happen to be the person fortunate to own the AFHRA microfilm roll that can provide some of the answers you seek.  If you haven't already, read and reread the helpful suggestions on the Research pages of this website.  According to this site's MACRdb, you are looking for MACR #12256 involving B-25J 43-28013 (there is a typo in the MACRdb listing of the airplane tail number).

To repay someone is to in turn help another should you find yourself in the position to do so.

Kevin Anderson

In researching the crew information I was given , I checked the American cemetary in Manila .
It lists
Pilot Frank E. Hendricks  Tablets of the Missing
Co -Pilot Jack A. Wilson   Tablets of the Missing
Navigator Thomas E. Dail  Tablets of the Missing
Radio Gunner Roscoe W. Chapman Tablets of Missing
Eng. Gunner Joseph C. Farrar  Jr. Tablets of Missing

The men above are listed with Mia/Kia FOD of December 26, 1945 ( a year and a day after being missing)
And
Armorer Gunner Richard J. Hocking  with a grave number  Plot C Row 8 Grave 69 Died December 25, 1944
Died  ( not missing) and Buried. Reading the report it said all were lost. SOOO  it could have been an error in the crew?? or could they have found one of them?? Who Do I ask?

My guesswork would be as follows:
 
- That Hocking washed ashore at some point, after January 1, 1945, which is the date the history report I quoted from was writtten.  As armour-gunner, he would have been the tail-gunner on the B-25 crew.  It is not unusual to hear that the tail gunner either managed to escape the plane (if survived a crash or parachute) or to hear that the tail broke off on impact.  (Sometimes it is the other way around.)
 
- And that the others were never found, possily never escaping the ship or surviving an impact.  The December 26, 1945, date is not unusual, in that a MIA cannot be declared dead until a year has passed.  The date on the tablet of missing would be the official recorded declaration of death.
 
What you would need to help unravel this are three things:  The MACR, which still may not explain it all, as it may been "closed out" as a report before Hocking was found, your uncle's IDPF, and Hocking's IDPF.  The IDPF will have statements of declaration of death as part of it.
 
(One of my dad's brothers was on Bataan when it was captured in 1942, and my uncle went MIA, with the family notified sometime in 1942.  In 1944, two year's after his last known date, the government declared him as presumed dead, with the family again notified.  After the war, when the POW camp records were obtained, the declaration of death was corrected back to his actual date of death, May 3, 1945, and his body exhumed to be ultimately reinterred at the cemetary in Manila - all that is part of the IDPF I obtained.  My uncle had survived the Death March, one of the first on the march from what we can reconstruct, but died a few days later of starvation in the POW camp.)
 
Kevin Anderson
Tribute to my WWII uncles:  http://helios.augustana.edu/~kla/uncles.html
 

My Dad flew a mission with the 75th(that was his squad, although I have learned there was some interchange between Groups, Squads)..on 12-25-44 to GOEREA(Moluccas Islands, Halmahera)..he had 16 missions that month.