A World War II bomber navigator missing in action for eight decades has been identified and will be coming home to an honored resting place in Arlington National Cemetery.
The remains of the Philadelphia aviator have taken a circuitous journey back to U.S. soil.
On August 3, 1943, U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Henry J. Carlin was navigating a B-25C “Mitchell” bomber when the crew of six crashed during a low-altitude raid in Meiikila, Burma, according to Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA.)
A ‘Mitchell’ B-25 medium bomber in flight circa 1942 (Bettman).
“Of the six individuals aboard the aircraft, two survived and were captured by Japanese forces, while the remaining four, including Carlin, were killed,” according to a DPAA statement released over the weekend. “His remains were not recovered after the war, and he was declared missing in action (MIA).”
Carlin was 27 years old.
The statement continued:
In 1947, the American Grave Registration Service recovered four sets of remains, later designated X-282A-D, from a common grave near the village of Kyunpobin, Burma. According to local witnesses, the remains came from an “American crash”. The remains could not be identified at the time and were interred as Unknowns in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl, in Honolulu.
Three years ago, the Defense Department approved a DPAA request to disinter those remains, which were sent to its laboratory for analysis.
DPAA gave Carlin’s family a thorough briefing on how the war hero was identified, which involved state of the art forensic science and a variety of techniques.
A North American B-25 ‘Mitchell’ medium bomber from the 38th Bombardment Group of the Fifth United States Army Air Force attacks Imperial Japanese transport ships and the harbour installations of Rabaul on 2nd November 1943 at Rabaul on New Britain Island in Papua New Guinea. (Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images).
The agency reported scientists from DPAA used “dental, anthropological, and radio isotope analysis” to identify Carlin’s remains, as well as mitochondrial DNA.
The DPAA noted:
Carlin’s name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial, an American Battle Monuments Commission site in the Philippines, along with the others missing from WWII. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
The DPAA has not yet released the status of the other remains that were recovered.
Formed in 2015, the DPAA is an agency within the defense department whose mission is to recover and identify personnel listed as prisoners of war or missing in past conflicts and from countries around the world.
The agency said Carlin’s remains will be buried in Arlington in the Spring of next year.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
