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JPAC helps bring closure as lost WW II pilot is buried at Arlington

  • Published
  • By Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Chlosta
  • NCOIC, JPAC Public Affairs Office
HICKAM AIR FORCE BASE, Hawaii --  Navy Ensign Robert Tills was born on Mar. 9, 1918. He died Dec. 8, 1941, He was just 23 years old. He was the pilot of a Navy PBY-4 Catalina Flying Boat aircraft. He liked to play guitar. He left behind a beautiful fiancee, his college sweetheart who he was just weeks away from reuniting with, when he was killed in action. He left behind two younger sisters and his parents. He also left behind a mystery -- what had happened to Tills' remains? 

The day after 'the day that will live in infamy'
The day after the brazen attack on Pearl Harbor, Tills' plane was moored alongside another Navy PBY-4 in Malalag Bay, in eastern Mindanao, Philippine Commonwealth, before Japanese planes known as "Zeros" zoomed in for an attack.
Tills and his Radioman, Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Albert E. Layton, took up defensive positions on their aircraft. Tills fired his aircraft machine gun at the Japanese fighter planes as they descended.
Tills was killed when his plane was strafed with machine gun fire by the Japanese Zeros. His PBY-4 was engulfed in flames in just a matter of seconds. Layton, who witnessed Tills getting hit, was able to jump from the burning aircraft only moments before it sank. Tills was not recovered from the submerged aircraft. Tills was the first Navy Officer lost in the defense of the Philippine Islands during World War II. 

'He always wanted to fly'
"Well of course, they never got over it," Tills' sister, Jean Aplin, 78, said about her parents' reaction to her brother's death.
"That's probably the memory I have most of that time was the grief of my parents. I just remember so, so well, how they grieved over this."
"He always wanted to fly," Aplin said. When he died, "of course I was just a little girl you know, but he was my big brother. He was my hero. I loved him."
Tills was 12 years older than Aplin, he also had another sister, "about five or six years younger."
Aplin's sister, who has since passed, took Tills death, "well, very badly," Aplin said. "I'm the only one in the family [left].
"He was declared missing," Aplin said. "We didn't know where he was or if the body had been recovered, if it was buried over there, we didn't know."
Aplin said that at some point they were told a witness (Layton) had seen him get shot.
"I don't remember exactly how we found out," Aplin said. I don't know if somebody came in person or if it was a telephone call."
"It was quite a while there, we didn't know what had happened and of course never did know what had happened until now," Aplin said. 

His fiancee
"He was finally coming home after being gone for two years," Vicki Lee, 89 said. "He was ready to come home that's the sad part. He was a perfect gentleman. He did take me up in a plane before he left for the Philippines.
Lee and Tills met at Northwestern College before he graduated with a degree in aeronautical engineering and joined the Navy to attend flight school and fly planes.
Flying, "that was his life," Lee said.
"The reason I am thinking of this is that he was going to come home that December and he and his finance, they were going to be married," Aplin said, several days before the funeral. "She [Vicki] was just a beautiful girl. I loved them both and we did find her. She is alive and well and will be at Arlington."
Aplin and Lee had lost touch over the years but were able to reconnect through the media interest in the story generated over the Internet. They were reunited in person for the first time in many, many year's moments before the funeral service.
"So now ever since I found out about her," Aplin said. "I just keep thinking of the two of them together and how nice it would've been." 

Until they're home
The mission of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command located at Hickam AFB is to search for, identify and return the remains of fallen Americans in the countries past conflicts.
Tills' puzzling case was finally solved by JPAC in 2008.
Tills' nephew, Aplin's son, Dave Aplin, 53, said, "The effort their making is just extraordinary. The extent to what JPAC went through when I read the report, the sensitivity and the amount of detail they went through has really been impressive.
He said, "to have the type of attention they've been given has meant a lot to my mom."
JPAC identified Tills' remains and material evidence more than 66 years after his death. Partial remains, pieces of Tills' plane and some of his personnel items were unilaterally turned over by the Philippine government. Tills' was found by local divers and fishermen in Malalag Bay in late 2007 and early 2008. JPAC flew an anthropologist to the Philippines to secure the remains and bring them home for identification.
"At this point anything is possible, the extent to which JPAC and others are going to identify remains and bring them back and when they are identified the sensitivity that's shown is really quite overwhelming Dave Aplin said.
"There is no question in my mind at this point that it [JPAC] is after seeing the affect it has had on my mom and my family to bring closure after so many years to something like this really does mean a lot, it really does," Dave Aplin said.
After identification, Aplin was notified in the summer of 2008 about the return and identification of her brother's remains.
"Well, they called, the MIA/POW, I don't remember his name now, called and told me," Aplin said. "And then they came to the house about four or five months later. They brought it [the report] along when they came and it had extensive reports on this."
"Well, it's very sad of course and yet I am very, very happy that we finally know and that he is finally coming home."
For the families still waiting, her advice is, "Well, I guess I'd say never give up hope, that you might hear something and have closure."

Going home
On March 19 Tills' remains were escorted from JPAC Headquarters in Hawaii to Virginia by Navy Reservist Lt. Cmdr. David Raine 42, Navy Casualty Division, Navy Personnel Command, Tenn., to be returned to his family for burial.
"I jumped at the opportunity," Raine said. "This is the first one I've done [for JPAC]."
Raine has two connections to Tills they are both originally from Wisconsin and they are both Navy pilots.
"[It is] somewhat special he is from my home state," Raine said. "I think it was one of the best assignments I ever had. It's a great honor to bring him home. I knew quite a bit about JPAC through attending family update briefs."

Arlington
On Monday on a crisp, clear day at Arlington National Cemetery Tills was buried with full military honors, only two weeks after what would've been his 91st birthday. The ceremony included a missing man formation flyover by Navy F-18 jets and an achingly beautiful playing of taps by a Navy bugler. Aplin was there and so was Lee.
Seated side by side, Aplin and Lee watched as the Navy Color Guard folded the American flag for presentation to Aplin by the Navy Chaplain at the conclusion of the graveside ceremony.
"She [Vicki] is the only one here besides me that remembers him very well so there certainly is a connection," Aplin said. "We both knew and loved Bob."
"I was shocked [to hear about Tills' identification] and to still be alive," Lee said. "At ninety I'm just lucky to be here. It's a closure for me to think they found his body after all these years and that they found me"
"I was really surprised," Aplin said, "and I think it's wonderful they still are searching and looking for the missing men. I thought that was great that they finally found him." 

Reception
Aplin's many relatives, including children and grandchildren and her sister's children and grand children, cousins, in-laws, everybody in the extended family it seemed was at Arlington.
Even with the trees still bare of leaves and the grass green and tinged with brown and sadness in their hearts, the post funeral reception at a hotel across from the State Department seemed like a long overdue family reunion.
Aplin's kids and grandkids and extended family had a profound awareness of Tills' memory growing up.
"They knew all about him," Aplin said. "We have pictures of course and his picture albums they've seen. So they were very well aware of that fact that he was missing."
Dave Aplin said, "At one of our family gatherings my mom had come with this report. She said they have found his remains, they would be bringing them back and he would be buried at Arlington. And at that point in time, we all said, well you just tell us when that's gonna happen and we'll be there. Today, it was incredible, just amazing."

'It's like I'm in a dream'
As the post funeral reception began to wind down and the room swirled with storytelling voices, Aplin reflected on the chapter in her family's history that was now coming to a close.
"I feel overwhelmed, I feel like I'm in a dream," Aplin said, "But I'm so happy, I'm so happy to see all our relatives, friends we haven't seen in a long time and I'm just amazed that we had such a turnout for this.
"I'm just real proud of them [the military] and I'm glad they are doing this for him and as I said, it's like I'm in a dream" Aplin said. "I can hardly believe it and I love it. I think it was wonderful that they honored him that way and that so many people came."
Aplin said her advice for the families still waiting for answers is," not to ever give up hope, we waited sixty seven years. It's wonderful the way they're still looking for those that are missing."