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## News Release

# Airman Lost In 1942 Crash Is Identified (Munn)

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced todaythat the remains of a U.S. Army Air Forces airman, missing since 1942, have been identified andwill soon be returned to his family for burial.

He is Aviation Cadet Ernest G. Munn, U.S. Army Air Forces, of St. Clairsville, Ohio. Hewill be buried in May in Colerain, Ohio.

Representatives from the Army met with Munn’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.

Munn was one of four men aboard a routine navigation training flight that departedMather Field, Calif., on Nov. 18, 1942. Their AT-7 Navigator aircraft carried about five hours offuel, and when the plane did not return to base, a search was initiated. It was suspended about amonth later with no results.

In 1947, several hikers on Darwin Glacier in the Sierra Nevada mountain rangediscovered the wreckage of the AT-7 aircraft. Fragmentary, skeletal remains found at the sitewere buried as a group in the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, Calif.

Then in October 2005, other hikers in the Sierra Nevadas discovered frozen humanremains, circumstantial evidence and personal effects of an aircrew member. Park rangers fromSequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and a forensic anthropologist from the JointPOW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) recovered the remains. They were shipped to theJPAC laboratory in Hawaii and identified as Cadet Leo M. Mustonen, one of the four men aboardthe AT-7 aircraft.

In 2007, two other hikers found human remains near the 2005 discovery site. 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 a second individual from the 1942 crew, Cadet Ernest G. Munn.

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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