More than 80 years after his fighter plane crashed during aerial battles over China, First Lt. Morton Scher, a Jewish American pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces who was killed at age 22, has been laid to rest in the United States. The final chapter left open since World War II was closed on Sunday, when Scher was buried at the Greenville cemetery in South Carolina, where for decades a gravestone bearing his name had stood above an empty grave.
The Jewish pilot was killed on August 20, 1943, when his aircraft crashed near Hengyang in China’s southeastern Hunan province, during an air battle against Japanese forces.
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First Lt. Morton Scher, a Jewish American pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces who was killed at age 22
(Photo: United States Department of War)
Scher, who was born in Baltimore, later moved with his family to Greenville, where he was active in the Beth Israel community. After studying commerce at the University of Alabama, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces and initially flew security missions over the Panama Canal before being deployed to China. According to military historians, he declined an offer to return home as a flight instructor, choosing instead to continue flying combat missions.
The day before he was killed, Scher wrote to his parents explaining his decision. “I let another pilot take that instructor job,” he wrote. “I find things too exciting here to leave right now.”
The U.S. War Department reported that, during a mission in October 1942, Scher was forced to make an emergency landing in a Chinese village, where residents welcomed him with food and celebrations. The villagers, grateful for American protection from Japanese forces that had massacred Chinese civilians, treated Scher as a hero. He was later warmly escorted through nearby mountain villages back to his base.
When Scher’s plane crashed in 1943, local villagers honored him by placing a memorial plaque at the site. After his death, he was awarded the Purple Heart, which was later presented to his mother that same year. A postwar U.S. investigation concluded in 1947 that nothing remained of him due to the crash, and he was officially classified as “killed in action and non-recoverable.”
That status changed decades later. In 2012, a civilian contacted the Defense Department agency responsible for locating missing service members after discovering Scher’s memorial site in China. Initial recovery efforts in 2012 and 2019 were unsuccessful. A broader search conducted in 2024 uncovered aircraft debris and human remains, which were later confirmed through DNA testing.
Scher was returned to his hometown with full military honors, including a color guard and flyovers by modern fighter jets. His wooden casket was draped in the American flag and bore a Star of David. Family members and friends placed stones on his gravestone in accordance with Jewish tradition and poured soil from Israel onto his grave.