Tue, Nov 04, 2008
Last Member Of Downed Liberator Crew To Be Accounted For
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO)
announced Monday the remains of a US serviceman, missing in action
from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to his
family for burial with full military honors.
He is Staff Sgt. Martin F. Troy, US Army Air Forces, of Norwalk,
Conn. He will be buried on November 20 in Arlington National
Cemetery near Washington, DC.
Representatives from the Army's Mortuary Office met with Troy's
next-of-kin to explain the recovery and identification process and
to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the
Secretary of the Army.
On June 30, 1944, Troy was on a B-24H Liberator (type shown
above) participating in a mission to bomb an oil refinery in
Blechammer, Germany. The plane was shot down by German aircraft and
crashed into a swampy area near Nemesvita, Hungary beside Lake
Balaton.
Seven of the crewmembers parachuted to safety where they were
captured by enemy forces and subsequently released. Three crewmen
died in the crash and the remains for two of them were eventually
recovered and identified. Troy's remains were not recovered.
In 1999 and 2003, Hungarian citizens turned over to US officials
human remains supposedly recovered from Troy's crash site. In 2003
and 2005, Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) teams surveyed
the site.
In 2007, another JPAC team excavated the site and recovered
human remains and non-biological evidence.
Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial
evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA
Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA in the
identification of Troy's remains.
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