Missing WWII Pilot Recovered in Former East Germany

The pilot crashed in an area taken over by the Russians in 1945.

Howard Enoch flew the P-51 Mustang Photo: static.howstuffworks.com

(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - The remains of a WWII U.S. serviceman, missing from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors, the Department of Defense released today.

The serviceman recovered is an aviator nameds 2nd Lieutenant Howard C. Enoch Jr., U.S. Army Air Forces, of Marion, Kentucky. He will be buried on September 22nd in Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, D.C.

The DoD says representatives from the Army met with Enoch'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.

On March 19th, 1945, Howard Enoch was the pilot of a P-51D Mustang that crashed while engaging enemy aircraft about 20 miles east of Leipzig, near the village of Doberschütz, Germany.

His remains were not recovered at the time, and Soviet occupation of eastern Germany precluded his recovery immediately after the war.

In 2004, a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) surveyed a possible P-51 crash site near Doberschütz. The team found aircraft wreckage. In 2006, another JPAC team excavated the site and recovered human remains and aircraft wreckage.

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 Howard Enoch's remains.