WWII pilot J.G. Ralph Cornelius Dupont was finally identified after 81 years of missing in action. | Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
Published on October 10, 2025 at 2:22 pm
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The remains of World War II Lt. J.G. Ralph Cornelius DuPont, a pilot missing since 1944, will be laid to rest at 2 p.m. Sunday at Pellicer Creek Cemetery in Hastings.
The burial, with full military honors and police escort, signals the Jacksonville man’s return to Florida after 81 years of being listed as missing in action. His remains were unidentified until just over three months ago.
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DuPont was a U.S. Navy pilot from Florida who served in Fighter Squadron 18, based on the USS Intrepid. On Oct. 12, 1944, his F6F-5 Hellcat joined an attack against Japanese forces near the Taien Airfield on Formosa, know known as Taiwan.
Three of the Hellcats were shot down, and one or two American pilots were seen bailing out of their aircraft, but others returning to the Intrepid could not identify them. DuPont was not accounted for during post-war searches of the area, and he was eventually declared non-recoverable, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Identifying the pilot
DuPont was listed as missing in action in a newspaper story printed Nov. 23, 1944, saying that the young man got his pre-flight training in Athens, Georgia then “won his wings” in 1943 at the air base in Pensacola, according to his mother. He lived on LaViere Street in Riverside, with a brother — Yeoman W.D. DuPont Jr., who served with the U.S. Navy in submarines.
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In 2023, DuPont’s next of kin shared their own research with the agency, believing that a previously unidentified set of remains found in 1946 near Taien Airfield could be his. Those remains had been buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu. The agency exhumed the remains on April 6, 2025, for forensic analysis, which led to their being identified as Dupont’s.
DuPont’s identification and repatriation to the U.S. is not the only Florida airman to come home from World War II.
On Sept. 12, 2024, U.S. Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. Alfred J. Hamwey was buried in Jacksonville, 79 years after the 24-year-old’s Douglas A-20G Havoc bomber was shot down while fighting Japanese forces over New Guinea. Forensic analysis of human remains found in late 2022 led the agency to announce that the remains were Hamwey’s.
People attending Lt. DuPont’s funeral Sunday at the cemetery on County Road 204 should get to the site by 1 p.m., according to the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office.
