X-Message-Number: 27252 Subject: SFGate: Narrowing down ID of airman frozen in the Sierra/Military has list of 10 missing World War II flyers From: "John B. Krug" <> Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 21:09:53 -0700 In my perfect world, any relatives would have consented to maintaining the status quo until a resusitation were possible. Best Regards! ~JBK This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SFGate. The original article can be found on SFGate.com here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/10/20/MNGDEFBE8913.DTL --------------------------------------------------------------------- Thursday, October 20, 2005 (SF Chronicle) Narrowing down ID of airman frozen in the Sierra/Military has list of 10 missing World War II flyers Suzanne Herel, Chronicle Staff Writer Investigators for a U.S. military unit formed to account for missing war veterans have compiled a list of fewer than 10 missing World War II Army airmen who could have crashed in Kings Canyon National Park in the early 1940s and whose remains could be those of an ice-encased soldier thawing out in the Fresno County morgue. Ice climbers discovered the man last weekend at the base of Mount Mendel, in the extreme northern portion of the park's mountainous wilderness. On Wednesday, park rangers and a forensic anthropologist from the military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command chipped the man out of the ice. A helicopter then delivered the airman to the Fresno County morgue Wednesday night, said Coroner Lori Cervantes. He was lying on a big wooden tray, entombed in about 400 pounds of ice and granite and zipped into several layers of body bags, she said. Thursday morning, he was in refrigerated storage "just like anyone else would be," said Cervantes, who planned to move the body on Thursday afternoon to a room in the morgue where the thawing process would begin. She said she planned to place a basin underneath the table holding the soldier to collect the dripping water. "We'll be thawing him out just like you would thaw anything else," she said. The forensic anthropologist from the POW/MIA Accounting group who helped chisel the veteran out of the glacier was expected to arrive at the morgue late Thursday afternoon, when he and the coroner's staff would decide the extent of examination that should take place there. Already, the coroner's investigators have X-rayed a portion of the remains in hopes of detecting dog tags. They found none. Cervantes said she had never seen anything like the old, icy remains. "It's amazing," she said. "He's been in the ice for 62 years. He's basically mummified." The man's head, shoulders and upper arms protruded from the ice but were still frozen, she said. The skin covering his face and arms was black and looked like leather, but his head still sported dark blond hair, she said. The man wore a green cable knit sweater over green thermal underwear, said Cervantes. "His arms are outstretched, like a bird almost." He also wore an unopened parachute stenciled with the words, "U.S. Army Air Corps.," which preceded the formation of the U.S. Air Force in 1947. "As coroners, this is a once-in-a-lifetime -- if ever -- opportunity, to recover someone like this," she said. "It's kind of what we live for here." Already, Cervantes has received several phone calls from people who heard about the discovery and wanted to offer possible identities. One call in particular, from a woman in the Midwest, seemed promising, she said. Another man contacted The Chronicle, saying that the remains could be those of a cousin, a military flight instructor from San Francisco who disappeared over the Sierra Nevadas. "Marky flew off across the Sierras and was never heard from again," he wrote. Investigators in Hawaii, too, have been combing the records of men lost during World War II. According to Troy Kitch, a spokesman for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, between 25 and 30 military planes crashed on training missions in California during the war years. They narrowed down the list of possible identifications judging by locations of found wrecks and previously identified bodies. Kitch said that regardless of what tests are done on the body in Fresno, the remains eventually would be flown to the unit's headquarters on Hickam Air Force Base in Oahu, Hawaii, home to the world's largest forensic anthropological lab. The military unit was formed in 2003 and tasked with accounting for as many of the country's missing war veterans as possible. There are 88,000 war veterans reported missing. Of those, 78,000 are from World War II. "It's just really an exciting opportunity. It's kind of what we live for here," Cervantes said. "We can't change what happened, but we can do good work and help someone." E-mail Suzanne Herel at ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2005 SF Chronicle Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27252