Frozen Airman's Body Heads Home

The body of an airman lost in a 1942 training accident on California's Mount Mendel Glacier -- and who was finally found more than 60 years later -- is finally heading home to Brainerd, MN.

It was only last week that members of Leo Mustonen's family finally learned conclusively what they had suspected: that the body found frozen in the glacier last October was that of the former 22-year-old airman.

"Since the discovery last October, it's been a journey of personally encountering him in a way that was rather surprising," said Mustonen's niece, Sister Mary Ruth Mustonen. "Instead of being an unknown entity in a plane that went down somewhere, we've been coming to know him."

Leo Mustonen was one of four airmen aboard a Beech AT-7 trainer (file photo of type, above) that left Sacramento November 18, 1942 for a navigation training flight. Wreckage from one of the aircraft's two engines was found five years later by a hiker in Kings Canyon State Park, some 200 miles off course, at an elevation of 13,700 feet.

A search party sent to investigate in 1947 found the aircraft's second engine, scraps of clothing, dried flesh and a pair of dog tags -- but nothing else, including no bodies.

The remaining wreckage sat under the thick ice of the glacier for the next 58 years, until climbers found a frozen body last October. As Aero-News reported at the time, the body was chipped from the ice, and investigators hoped it would hold enough clues to make a determination then.

When that proved impossible, the body was carefully thawed, and then flown to Hawaii's Hickam AFB for DNA identification by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command -- a task made more difficult as Mustonen had no immediate surviving relatives to submit to testing.

A match was finally made, according to the Knight-Ridder news service, after obtaining mitochondrial DNA from Mustonen's niece. Specimens were also obtained from female relatives of the other three men who were believed to be onboard the AT-7 (the DNA type used for matching is passed down to men from their mothers.)

It was through that process of elimination, in addition to matching up the body's physical characteristics with those of Mustonen, that a match was made.

Although Mustonen's military service qualifies him for interment at Arlington National Cemetery -- with honors -- his family felt it would be best to bring him home to Brainerd, near his mother and father. The family expects to receive his remains next month.

"All our family is still there, cousins all over the place," Sister Mary Ruth said. "It's where he belongs."

The motto of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, tasked with the unenviable duty of identifying remains of lost soldiers, is "Until they are home."  Thanks to their efforts, Leo Mustonen will soon be home, surrounded by his family.

FMI: www.jpac.pacom.mil/