WWII Airman found 63 years later

[Ryan_Miller]

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Heard on the News that they are supposed to find out who the man was sometime this week.


Discovery of WWII airman's corpse may end 63 years
of uncertainty for family


Associated
Press
Oct. 26, 2005 07:15
AM


COLUMBUS, Ohio - Jeanne Pyle hopes she may finally find out what happened to her brother, who has been missing since his military plane crashed during World War II.

She believes there's a chance that the well- preserved remains of an airman found this month in a Sierra Nevada glacier were those of her
brother.

Pyle, 85, remembers her brother, Cadet Ernest Munn, as a handsome, 6-foot-4 man with blond hair and blue eyes. He was among four airmen who died when their navigational training plane crashed after leaving a
Sacramento, Calif., airfield in November 1942. None of the members of that flight was ever found.

Mountain climbers found the remains on Oct. 16 in California's Kings Canyon National Park, the head and arm jutting out of the receding glacier. The body was in an Army uniform, and the hair was blond. It was
flown Monday to Hickam Air Force Base on Oahu, Hawaii, where it is being examined at the Joint POW- MIA Accounting Command for identification.

Confirmation that the body is that her brother would end a painful mystery that has lasted 63 years, said Pyle, who lives near St. Clairsville, about 110 miles east of Columbus.

"It would be exciting, in a sad way," said Pyle, who recalled last seeing her brother at a party on his 21st birthday, days before he enlisted in the Army.
"We've been living with an empty feeling for so long. It would be nice to finally resolve this."

Forensic anthropologists there said they have a lot to work with. The ice preserved the body's skin and muscle, as well as the man's sun-bleached hair and his green uniform.

Military officials said the identification process
would take weeks, possibly months. They also cautioned that the airman might not be blond at all and that his hair could have been discolored by the sun.

The three other men on the plane were pilot 2nd Lt. William A. Gamber of Fayette, Ohio; Cadet John Mortenson of Moscow, Idaho; and Cadet Leo M. Mustonen of Brainerd, Minn.

Pyle, the oldest of three sisters, said her brother's death was hard on her family, but especially her mother, who rode a train to Sacramento to attend a memorial service after military personnel suspended a search for the crew in 1942.

Munn worked at an investment firm in Wheeling, W. Va., across the Ohio River from their farm near St. Clairsville, before enlisting.

"I don't remember anybody in the family questioning his decision," said Pyle, who keeps letters from her brother boxed up in her garage. "He died doing what he wanted to do."
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Ryan Miller
MVPA # 22010