The remains of a Massachusetts airman missing in action from World War II have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial, the Department of Defense said Wednesday.
Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. Martin P. Murray, 21, of Lowell, Massachusetts, took off on October 27, 1943, from an airfield near Port Moresby, New Guinea, with 11 other crew members aboard a B-24D Liberator. The last radio transmission from the crew did not indicate their location. Multiple search missions in the following weeks did not locate the aircraft.
In August 2003, a crash site location was reported by a citizen in Papua New Guinea. An American team was able to successfully excavate the site from January to March 2007 where they found several identification tags from the B-24D crew as well as human remains. Scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used forensic identification tools, circumstantial evidence, dental comparisons and mitochondrial DNA to identify Murray's remains.
Murray's remains will be buried Saturday in Marshfield, Massachusetts, the Defense Department said.
You can read more in an article in CNN at http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/13/airman.remains.identified
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