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Remains of WWII pilot found in Germany

The remains of 2nd Lt. Howard C. Enoch Jr., an Army Air Forces pilot who had been missing since World War II, were positively identified by the POW/Missing Personnel Office and will be returned to his family, the Defense Department announced Wednesday.

Enoch, of Marion, Ky., will be buried Sept. 22 at Arlington National Cemetery, Va.

Army representatives met with Enoch’s next of kin to explain the recovery and identification process and to coordinate interment with military honors on behalf of the secretary of the Army.

According to the Defense Department release, on March 19, 1945, Enoch was the pilot of a P-51D Mustang that crashed while engaging enemy aircraft about 20 miles east of Leipzig, near the village of Doberschütz, Germany.

His remains were not recovered at the time, and Soviet occupation of eastern Germany precluded his recovery immediately after the war.

In 2004, a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command surveyed a possible P-51 crash site near Doberschütz and found aircraft wreckage.

In 2006, another JPAC team excavated the site and recovered human remains and aircraft wreckage.

Among 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 Enoch’s remains, the release said.

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.