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News Release

Press Release | April 14, 2009

Airman Missing In Action From WWII Is Identified (Doyle)

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from World War II, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

He is Staff Sgt. Jimmie Doyle, U.S. Army Air Forces, of Lamesa, Texas. He will be buried April 25 in Lamesa.

Representatives from the Army’s Mortuary Affairs Office met with Doyle’s next-of-kin in his hometown to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the Secretary of the Army.

On September 1, 1944, Doyle was one of eleven men on board a B-24J Liberator bomber that was shot down while on a bombing reconnaissance mission of enemy targets near the town of Koror, Republic of Palau. Three of the crewmen parachuted from the aircraft and died while prisoners of the Japanese, and the other eight crewmen, including Doyle, went down with the plane into the sea between Babelthuap and Koror islands.

In 2004, a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command team conducted an underwater investigation of aircraft wreckage submerged off the southern coast of Babelthuap Island. Between 2005 and 2008, combined JPAC/U.S. Navy Mobile Diving and Salvage teams excavated the site three times and recovered human remains and material evidence, including machine guns bearing serial numbers that match those of guns mounted on this plane, and identification media for three of the crewmen on the plane.

Among dental records, other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory also used mitochondrial DNA in the identification of Doyle’s remains.

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.