Nearly 80 years ago, an American bomber co-piloted by 2nd Lt. Gilbert Haldeen Myers was shot down over Sicily, Italy. Myers, who was nowhere to be found after the accident, was declared missing in action. But finally, using expert forensic techniques, Myers was found, he announced.
The plane carrying 27-year-old Myers and five of his fellow U.S. Army Air Forces crew members crashed about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) from the island’s Sciacca Airfield in July 1943, and none of the crew were thought to have survived. The search for Myers’ remains by Cranfield University’s Combat Casualty Recovery and Identification team (CRICC) and the US Defense Prisoner of War/Casualty Discovery Agency (DPAA) were also focusing on this area.
The CRICC team of 20 forensic experts was responsible for the careful excavation process at the crash site. David Errickson, senior lecturer in archeology and anthropology at the Cranfield Institute of Forensic Medicine, said in a statement: “During our work, we systematically excavated the ground, meticulously examining every piece that could be bone or other evidence,” and continued: “Our team was involved in the excavation in Sicily. He used wet dredging, a process in which excavated material is passed through water, to separate and analyze human remains and artifacts in harsh environments such as the site.
The team successfully recovered human remains as well as pieces of aircraft wreckage during the excavations. These were then sent to the DPAA laboratory, which is considered the largest and most diverse skeletal identification library in the world. Forensic anthropologists there conducted DNA analysis and confirmed that the remains belonged to Myers, along with anthropological and circumstantial evidence such as personal items the team found.
“The discovery of 2nd Lt. Myers’ remains not only facilitates burial with appropriate military honors, but also allows the family to retrieve any personal items found,” Errickson said. “Most importantly, it enables the families of those missing or killed in action to find the closure they seek,” he said. Myers on November 10 in St. He was buried in St. Petersburg, Florida.
There are more than 72,000 American personnel lost during World War II. Although it is thought that 39,000 of them can be found, there are serious difficulties for the studies.
“Sometimes such excavations may yield no results or remain uncertain,” said Nicholas Márquez-Grant, a forensic anthropologist at the Cranfield Institute of Forensic Medicine. “Conditions are also affected by post-event land use. “In areas where farming has been done or the landscape has changed, discoveries are often limited to very small patches.”
But Márquez-Grant added that sometimes these fragments become key pieces of identification, and finding and identifying Myers shows that it is indeed possible to find those missing and killed in conflict.
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