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. 

FMI: www.dtic.mil/dpmo