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Defense POW/MIA Accounting AgencyFulfilling Our Nation's Promise

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## News Release

# WWII Soldier Identified (Kiger)

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that theremains of a U.S. serviceman, missing from World War II, have been identified and are being returnedto his family for burial with full military honors.

Army Sgt. Jerome E. Kiger, of Mannington, W.V., will be buried on July 21, in Fairmont, W.V.On July 21, 1944, a B-24H Liberator aircraft, which carried nine crew members, was shot down byenemy fire and crashed while on a bombing raid to Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. Of the nine crewmembers, six were able to parachute to safety and a seventh crewman’s remains were recovered nearHadorf. Kiger and another crewman were not recovered. Attempts to recover their remains after thewar were unsuccessful.

In 2009, a German national turned over human remains to a Joint POW/MIA AccountingCommand (JPAC) investigating team who was operating in southern Germany. The German nationalrecovered the remains and aircraft wreckage from a crash site southwest of Munich.

In 2012, a JPAC recovery team excavated the suspected crash site southwest of Munich, locatingadditional human remains and aircraft wreckage.

To identify Kiger’s remains, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA IdentificationLaboratory (AFDIL) used circumstantial evidence and forensic identification tools such as dentalcomparisons and mitochondrial DNA, which matched Kiger’s sister and niece.

Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died. At the end ofthe war, the U.S. government was unable to recover and identify approximately 79,000 Americans.Today, more than 73,000 are unaccounted-for from the conflict.

For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missingAmericans, visit the DPMO web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.

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