Army Air Forces Sgt. Charles A. Gardner of San Francisco, Calif., will be buried with full military honors Thursday in Arlington National Cemetery.
Gardner, along with 11 of his fellow crew members, went missing on April 10, 1944, after his B-24D Liberator aircraft was shot down over New Guinea.
According to the Department of Defense, three of the crew members' remains were recovered in 1949.
It wasn't until 2001 that the wreckage of Gardner's B-24D was spotted.
The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command teams then excavated the site where the plane wreckage was found, and recovered "human remains and non-biological material evidence."
It was then time to identify Gardner:
...Scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used circumstantial evidence and forensic identification tools, including mitochondrial DNA, which matched Gardner’s maternal niece and nephew.
The public affairs office of the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office gives Gardner's age when he went missing as 32-years-old.
