Jan. 13, 1928 – Nov. 25, 2015
SARASOTA, FLA. – As vice president of Aloha Airlines (1966-68) and Northwest Airlines (1968-87), Bryan Moon, 87, was used to making powerful decisions, but none as important as his quest to recover the bodies of American pilots and crews missing in action during World War II. When he was 11 years old growing up in England, Moon was sent to live in rural England with a million other children to avoid Nazi bombing raids. He never forgot those times and the pilots who fought to defend England, and upon retirement, began searching for missing-in-action pilots and their crews.
Moon first searched for lost World War II bombers in Romania where he found the remains of a missing B-24 bomber from the famous low-level air raid on the Ploesti oil refineries. He then made three missions into the mountains of China, and found and retrieved sections of the lost Doolittle B-25 bombers from the first U.S. attack on Japan. These missions led Moon to founding MIA Hunters, Inc., a registered Minnesota non-profit charity, which remains the only civilian MIA search organization in the United States. Under Moon’s leadership, MIA Hunters completed 34 missions worldwide.
Moon was a general aviation pilot and flew aerobatics in a GROB G115D out of Red Wing, Minn. for years. He and his wife, Cicely, lived in Cannon Falls, Minn. in the summer, and Sarasota, Fla. in the winter. He died at his home in Sarasota, Fla., on Nov. 25, 2015 (www.miaHunters.com).