Critz's presumed date of death is January 29, 1946, and he completed 10 months and 18 days of active service at the time of his death.
Critz was on a C-46 transport plane carrying five crew members of the 56th Troop Carrier Squadron, 375th Troop Carrier Group and five passengers of the Student Detachment, 360th Air Service Group.
The aircraft left on January 29th, 1945 from the Serido Strip, Blak Island, Netherlands Indies on a cargo mission to Dulag, Leyte, Philippine Islands. The plane disappeared because of unknown reasons in the Pacific region.
The plane disappeared with its passengers in an area of American control. Consequently, the failure of the searches to find any trace of the lane or personnel is reasonably conclusive of the fact that it went down, cause unknown, into the sea and that all personnel aboard perished in the crash or shortly afterwards by drowning.
Search
The last radio contact was made before take-off, and attempts were made to locate the aircraft by radio as soon as it was known that they were missing, but they proved to be futile.
Search missions were organized. Twelve airplanes from the 375th Troop Carrier Group started their search on February 1945, but no sightings were reported. Investigators searched the follow records in an effort to locate any possible burial location of subject decadents:
A-Z files of known interments in US Military Cemeteries and isolated locations
Alphabetical index file of “believed to be” and potentially identified unknowns
Alphabetical file of former unknowns now identified
Geographical clue index file of unknowns interred in U.S. Military Cemeteries in the general area in which the subject deceased was last reported