Missing World War II Airmen identified

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WASHINGTON (AFPN) --  Nine Airmen missing in action from World War II have been identified and are being returned to their families for burial with full military honors, officials from the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced June 27.

The nine are 2nd Lt. Hugh Johnson Jr., Montgomery, Ala.; 2nd Lt. Byron Stenen, Northridge, Calif.; 2nd Lt. John Green, Watertown, N.Y.; 2nd Lt. John Meisner, Pembroke, Mass.; Staff Sgt. Walter Knudsen, Sioux City, Iowa; Cpl. John DeCarlo, Newark, N.J.; Cpl. Robert Raney, Monon, Ind.; Cpl. William Mohr, Mt. Wolf, Pa.; and Cpl. Michael Pushkar, Mahanoy City, Pa., all assigned to the U.S. Army Air Forces.

The individually-identified remains of Lieutenants Stenen, Green and Meisner, and Corporals Mohr and Pushkar are being buried June 27 at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C., as are the group remains representing all nine crewmen. Lieutenant Johnson, Sergeant Knudsen and Corporal Raney are being buried elsewhere.

On the morning of Oct. 9, 1944, the crew took off on a training mission from Nadzab, New Guinea, in their B-24D Liberator. The aircraft was not seen again, and it was speculated that it had encountered bad weather.

In early 2002, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Port Moresby reported the discovery of two dog tags by villagers from a World War II crash site in Morobe Province. Specialists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command traveled to Papua, New Guinea, in November 2002 to investigate several World War II aircraft losses. The team interviewed the two villagers who gave them the dog tags, then surveyed the site where aircraft wreckage and human remains were found.

A joint team of JPAC and New Guinea specialists mounted a full-scale excavation at the site in January and February 2003 where they recovered additional human remains and crew-related artifacts from the wreckage field. JPAC scientists and Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory specialists used mitochondrial DNA as one of the forensic tools to help identify the remains. Laboratory analysis of dental remains also confirmed their identification.

(Courtesy of the Defense POW/MIA Personnel Office)