The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today
that the remains of a U.S. serviceman from World War II have been identified and are being
returned to the family for burial with full military honors.
Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Warren G. Moxley, 23, of Charleston, Mo., will be buried on July
3, in his hometown. On March 15, 1945, Moxley was flying an F-6C aircraft when he crashed
near Asbach, Germany. Another American pilot flying in the same mission witnessed the crash
and did not see a parachute deploy. Following the war, Army Graves Registration Service was
not able to locate the crash site.
In 1993, a German citizen led U.S. government officials to a crash site near Asbach, and
turned over human remains. In 2006, a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC)
investigation team interviewed the German citizen, gathered additional evidence, and concluded
that Moxley’s aircraft was the only U.S. aircraft to crash in the area.
Among forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC and
the Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab used mitochondrial DNA—which matched that of
Moxley’s brother—in the identification of his remains.
Of the 16 million Americans who served in World War II, more than 400,000 died. At the
end of the war, the U.S. government was unable to recover and identify approximately 79,000
Americans. Today, more than 73,000 remain unaccounted-for from the conflict.
For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missing
Americans, visit the DPMO web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1420.