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Defense POW/MIA Accounting AgencyFulfilling Our Nation's Promise

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## News Release

# Airman From WWII Identified (Miaskiewicz)

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

Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. Meceslaus T. Miaskiewicz, 27, of Salem, Mass. will be buriedon Nov. 12, in his hometown. On May 18, 1944, Miaskiewicz and ten other airmen departedTortorella Air Field, Italy, on a mission to bomb the Ploesti Oil Refinery in Romania, when theirB-17G aircraft was shot down over Yugoslavia – what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina. Three of thecrew members were detained as Prisoners of War by German forces, and returned to the UnitedStates at the end of the war. The rest of the crew was presumed dead.

In 1947, the U.S. Army Graves Registration Service (AGRS) recovered the remains ofwhat was believed to be the missing eight crew members, who had been buried by the villagers ofStubica, near the site of the crash. AGRS identified six of the airmen, and the other two, thoughtto be Miaskiewicz and one other, were buried as group remains in Farmingdale, N.Y.

In 2011, U.S. government officials were notified that an archeological team from the townof Ljubuski, had disinterred the remains of an American, whose grave had been tended by thevillagers of Stubica for more than 65 years. The Armed Forces Regional Medical Examiner’sOffice in Germany identified the remains as Miaskiewicz.

Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from theArmed Forces Regional Medical Examiner’s Office for Europe used dental analysis andmitochondrial DNA — which matched that of Miaskiewicz’s sisters — in the identification of hisremains.

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 remain 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) 699-1420.

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