B-24J Liberator Went Down During A Bombing Raid Over
Berlin
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO)
announced late last week that the remains of 10 U.S. servicemen,
missing in action from World War II, have been identified and are
being returned to their families for burial with full military
honors.
File Photo
Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. Robert R. Bishop, 24, of Joliet, IL, 2nd
Lt. Thomas Digman, Jr., 24, of Pittsburgh, PA, 2nd Lt. Donald W.
Hess, 28, of Sioux City, IA, 2nd Lt. Arthur W. Luce, 24, of Fort
Bragg, CA, Staff Sgt. Joseph J. Karaso, 21, of Philadelphia, PA,
Staff Sgt. Ralph L. McDonald, 22, of East Point, GA, Sgt. John P.
Bonnassiolle, 20, of Oakland, CA, Sgt. James T. Blong, 19, of Port
Washington, WI, Sgt. Michael A. Chiodo, 22, of Cleveland, OH, and
Sgt. John J. Harringer, Jr., 20, of South Bend, IN, will be buried
as a group, in a single casket representing the entire crew, on
Oct. 26, in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C. Hess
and Karaso will be interred individually at the same ceremony in
Arlington.
On April 29, 1944, the 10 airmen were ordered to carry out a
bombing mission over Berlin, Germany, in their B-24J Liberator
aircraft, piloted by Bishop and Luce. German documents captured
after the war noted that the aircraft crashed near the town of East
Meitze, Germany, and there were no survivors. German forces buried
the remains of Digman, Blong, and one unknown airman in a cemetery
near Hannover, Germany, around the time of the crash. In 1946, the
Army Graves Registration Service exhumed the remains of the three
individuals for identification and reburied them in a U.S. Military
Cemetery in Condroz, Belgium.
In 2003, a German national located the site of the crash and
recovered human remains, which were turned over to U.S. officials.
In 2005, a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) team excavated
the crash site and gathered additional human remains, military
equipment, and metal identification tags for Bishop, Blong,
Bonnassiolle, and Harringer. The team also recovered a class ring
with the initials AWL – presumably belonging to Luce. In
2007, a JPAC team completed the site excavation and found
additional evidence that helped to confirm the identity of the
crew.
Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial
evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA
Identification Laboratory used dental analysis and mitochondrial
DNA—which matched that of some of the crewmembers’
families—in the identification of their remains.
Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more
than 400,000 died. At the end of the war, the U.S. government was
unable to recover and identify approximately 79,000 Americans.
Today, more than 73,000 remain unaccounted-for from the
conflict.