Remains identified in 2023;
2Lt Max Dailey went Missing over Romania on August 1, 1943, he was 21 years old…

Born in Cherokee, Iowa to Merle and Helen Dailey on December 15, 1921, Max Eugene Dailey had two sisters.
Their mother Helen died of cancer in 1937.

Max attended school in Waterloo and graduated from high school in Des Moines.
He was attending the Iowa State Teachers College when he enlisted in the USAAF and was trained as a B-24 navigator.

Serving in the 409th Bomb Squadron, 93rd Bomb Group, Max was the Navigator on B-24D “Jose Carioca” 42-40617-N.
They took off with a crew of eleven on August 1, 1943 from North Africa for Operation Tidal Wave, the bombing of the oil refineries at Ploiești, Romania.

Hit by flak while on approach to the target area, they were in flames when they dropped their bombs. Afterwards the pilots lost control and “Jose Carioca” crashed into the Ploesti women’s jail.

His remains were not identified after the war and 2Lt Max Dailey was Memorialized with the Missing at the Florence American Cemetery and Memorial in Italy.

Postwar it was found that several USAAF crewmembers had been buried by Romanian citizens at the Bolovan Cemetery in Ploiești.
The remains that could not be identified at the time were reburied as “Unknowns” at the Ardennes American and Henri-Chapelle American Cemeteries in Belgium.

In 2017, DPAA began exhuming the unknown USAAF remains from Operation Tidal Wave for DNA identification.
On June 22, 2023, DPAA announced that 2Lt Max Dailey had been accounted for, he was buried with full military honors on June 12, 2024 at Riverton Cemetery in Riverton Township, Iowa.