The
Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO)
announced today (Oct. 9, 2006) that the remains of a U.S.
serviceman, missing in action from World War II, have been
identified and returned to his family for burial with full
military honors.
He is 1st Lt. Shannon E. Estill, U.S. Army Air Forces, of
Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He will be buried on October 10 in Arlington
National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.
On April 13, 1945, Estill's P-38J Lightning was struck by enemy
anti-aircraft fire while attacking targets in eastern Germany.
Another U.S. pilot reported seeing Estill's aircraft explode and
crash. Because the location of the crash site was within the
Russian-controlled sector of occupied Germany, U.S. military
personnel could not recover Estill's remains after the war.
In 2003, a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC)
investigated a crash site near the town of Elsnig in eastern
Germany. The site had been reported by two German nationals whose
hobby is finding the location of World War II crash sites. They
also claimed to have found remains at the site, which they turned
over to U.S. Army officials. The team surveyed the site and
interviewed two more men who witnessed the crash as children.
In 2005, another JPAC team excavated
the crash site and recovered additional human remains as well as
P-38 wreckage. Included in the recovered wreckage was an aircraft
data plate from Estill's plane.
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 the remains, matching DNA sequences from a
maternal relative.
Source: arlingtoncemetery.net/seestill.htm
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