Welcome Home and Goodbye, Brothers

Seven US Navy airmen, missing since World War II, were buried with full honors Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery, after one of the longest missions in military history.

On March 25, 1944, the crew of the PV-1 Ventura bomber was headed from Attu Island (AK) to bomb targets in the Japanese Kurile Islands. But the flight of five aircraft ran into heavy weather. The pilot, Lt. Walter Whitman Jr. of Philadelphia (PA), radioed his position back to Attu about six hours into the flight. The PV-1 was never heard from again. The Navy sent several ships and aircraft into an area extending 200 miles from Attu, but no wreckage was found.

Time marched on. Then, in January, 2000, members of the US-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs got a report from a Russian who said he'd found wreckage of an American aircraft on the Kamchatka Peninsula way back in 1962. So, later that year, specialists from the military's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii joined members of the commission on a search for the wreckage. They found it, along with human remains.

Two years ago, the team returned to the site and conducted an excavation. They found more remains, artifacts and even personal effects from the crew. With that, experts were able to determine that the aircraft was indeed the missing PV-1.

What remained, of course, was identifying the remains of the seven-man crew. For the past two years, scientists have used a number of forensic identification methods, including DNA testing, to determine the crew's identities.

Although a lot of attention has been focused on soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines missing since the Vietnam conflict, more than 78,000 American service members remain missing, 58 years after the end of World War II.

Lt. Walter Whitman Jr. of Philadelphia (PA), Lt. (jg) John Hanlon Jr. of Worcester (MA), PO2 Clarence Fridley of Manhattan (MT), PO2 Donald Lewallen of Omaha (NE), PO2 Jack Parlier of Decatur (IL), PO3 Samuel Crown Jr. of Columbus (OH), and PO3 James Palko of Superior (WI) have all gone west after a long, cold mission.

Happy landings to all, God Bless...

FMI: www.qmfound.com/Army_Central_Identification_Laboratory_Hawaii.htm