The remains of 1st Lt. Walter R. Bateman, lost with the 10-man crew of the famed B-24 bomber Suzy Q in 1943, will arrive in Bel Air on Friday before his Sept. 6 burial in Joppa.
For more than eight decades, Walter R. Bateman existed in the uneasy space between lost and gone.
The 22-year-old pilot vanished over Italy during World War II. His bomber never returned. Remains recovered two years later could not be identified, leaving Bateman’s family without a grave and the military without an answer.
That changed on May 29, 2026.
Modern forensic work identified Bateman among remains exhumed from an American military cemetery in 2022, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. On Friday, Aug. 28, his remains are expected to arrive at BWI Marshall Airport and travel by motorcade to Bel Air, beginning the final leg of a journey that started 83 years ago.
Veterans groups, county officials and residents plan to gather outside Schimunek Funeral Home to welcome him. The gathering is open to the public.
“His return after 83 years is more than the recovery of a World War II airman,” Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly said. “It’s the fulfillment of America’s promise to all those who serve — that they will never be forgotten, and we will not rest until they are home.”
The last mission of Suzy Q
Bateman was the pilot of Suzy Q, a B-24D Liberator with a reputation already forged by the time he took it into the air on Aug. 16, 1943.
The bomber, serial number 41-23817, arrived at Shipdham, England, in September 1942 and flew 28 missions, according to records from the 44th Bomb Group Veterans Association. The association describes it as one of the group’s most famous aircraft.
Fifteen days before Bateman’s final flight, Suzy Q participated in Operation Tidal Wave, the dangerous low-level bombing raid against the oil fields at Ploesti, Romania. Col. Leon Johnson flew the aircraft while leading the 44th Bomb Group during that mission and later received the Medal of Honor for his actions.
A different crew was aboard Suzy Q on Aug. 16.
The 44th Bomb Group sent 26 B-24s from Benina, Libya, to attack enemy airfields at Foggia, Italy. Seven aircraft failed to return, according to the military accounting agency.
Suzy Q was one of them. All 10 men aboard were killed:
- 1st Lt. Walter R. Bateman, pilot
- 1st Lt. Halbert W. Propst, co-pilot
- 2nd Lt. William C. Travis Jr., navigator
- 2nd Lt. John T. Ellis, bombardier
- Tech. Sgt. Robert D. Chapman, engineer
- Tech. Sgt. Herbert F. Post, radio operator
- Staff Sgt. Michael A. Cianciolo, assistant engineer
- Sgt. Adolph P. Aguirre, assistant radio operator
- Staff Sgt. Joe A. Stevenson, gunner
- Staff Sgt. Charles R. Smith, gunner
The precise place where Suzy Q went down has remained uncertain. What followed is clearer.
Unknown for generations
In April 1945, American graves-registration personnel recovered several sets of commingled, unidentified remains from a cemetery in Lacedonia, Italy.
Local information indicated that the dead were American airmen shot down on Aug. 16, 1943. Investigators also found aircraft wreckage. The evidence pointed toward a wartime loss, but the tools available at the time could not connect the remains or wreckage to a particular bomber and crew.
The remains were buried as unknowns at the U.S. Military Cemetery in Naples.
There they stayed until June 2022, when the Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed them and sent them to a Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency laboratory.
The agency has said modern forensic methods established Bateman’s identity.
Three of Bateman’s crewmates were identified on the same date: Chapman, Cianciolo and Smith. The agency now lists those four men as accounted for. Several other members of Suzy Q’s crew remain unaccounted for, meaning the work that brought Bateman home has not yet closed the case of the bomber and the men who died aboard it.
Friday’s homecoming
Bateman’s remains are scheduled to arrive aboard Southwest Flight 1684 at 6:15 p.m. Friday. A dignified transfer ceremony is planned on the airport tarmac before a motorcade escorts him to Schimunek Funeral Home, 610 W. MacPhail Road in Bel Air.
County officials expect the motorcade to reach Bel Air around 7:30 p.m. The funeral home estimates an arrival closer to 8 p.m. if the flight remains on schedule.
Members of the public may gather at the funeral home for the arrival. Visitors can remain afterward to pay their respects and sign the guest book until 9 p.m.
Bateman’s funeral is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 6, at Union Chapel United Methodist Church at 1012 Old Joppa Road in Joppa. Burial in the church cemetery is expected to begin at approximately 1:30 p.m.
The honors will come late. The welcome will come generations after Bateman and the other men climbed aboard Suzy Q for a mission from which none returned.
But on Friday evening, the designation that followed him through military records for decades will finally give way to something simpler.
Walter R. Bateman is coming home.
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