Ellis, Edward Porter

Name: Ellis, Edward Porter, LT, USNR

Local address: 167 Main St, Matawan, NJ (this was the residence of his in-laws. The article reporting him MIA listed him at 169 Main, next door. He and his wife may have been living there, but I suspect it is a typo in the article.)

Edward was the only child of Edward Royse Ellis (1888-1960) and Serena Hawley Wolfe (1890-1986). His father was an employee of Westinghouse and he and his wife were living in London, England, when his son was born there on June 29, 1915. By 1920, the family had returned to the United States and settled in Maplewood, NJ.

Edward attended Columbia High School in South Orange/Maplewood, graduating in 1932. He was a member of the school’s Electrical Committee, responsible for electrical-related items used by the school. He continued his studies at Cornell and became an electrical engineer and by 1940 was employed in that capacity for Western Electric. On May 25, 1940, he married Phyllis Flager Todd (1916-1995), the second daughter of Van Winkle Todd (1892-1959), the President of Matawan’s Hansen-Van Winkle-Munning Company. The marriage took place at 167 Main, the residence of his in-laws, which later became the Lloyd residence to the right of the Matawan Library. He subsequently went to work for his father-in-law.

When the war started, Edward was commissioned as an officer in the US Navy. He trained at MIT, and I suspect he was involved in using his electrical engineering expertise to assist the Navy in enhancing that aspect of their war effort. He was subsequently transferred to the Pacific Theater.

On July 27, 1945, about three weeks before the Japanese surrender, Edward was a passenger on a US Marine Corps PBJ-1 Mitchell twin engine bomber, their equivalent of the B-25, when it failed to return from a mission. Naval war diaries indicate that last contact with the plane was near Hachijo Jima around 180 miles south of Tokyo. It was running on a single engine and was apparently OK at the time of contact – there were no Japanese forces reported in the area. The plane disappeared, and Edward and the six other crewmen aboard are listed as MIA by the US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA).

One account indicates Edward was a “passenger on a cargo flight.” However, the Naval War Dairy of the squadron involved, VMB-612, describes it as a “mission” and it is unclear why a cargo flight would be operating in the area the A/C was last known to be. The PBJ-1s in the squadron were using rockets against Japanese shipping at that time, a relatively new weapon that would require technical expertise in electronic fire control. I strongly suspect that Edward was employed in that capacity.

In an interesting side note, Edward’s father-in-law Van Winkle Todd, with whom his wife was living when Edward was lost, was a fighter pilot in WWI who was shot down behind enemy lines and was MIA for a period of time. One can imagine the father comforting his daughter and encouraging her not to give up hope. Unfortunately. Edward never came home.

A month after Edward was declared MIA, his wife Phyllis gave birth to a daughter, Margaret. She never remarried and died in the State of Washington in 1995. Daughter Margaret married and now resides in that state.