The remains of an American airman who was listed as unaccounted for after his plane was shot down over France during World War II have been found and identified almost 80 years later.
U.S. Army Air Force Staff Sgt. Franklin P. Hall, from Leesburg, Florida, was killed on Jan. 21, 1944, when his B-24D Liberator "Queen Marlene" was shot down by the German Luftwaffe near the rural village of Équennes-Éramecourt, southwest of Amiens.
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The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) said in a press release Monday that the gunner was officially declared accounted for on July 13 this year.
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After the plane was shot down, German forces quickly went to the crash site and recovered the remains of the nine men on board, the DPAA said. These bodies were then buried in a cemetery at Poix-de-Picardie, but Hall's remains couldn't be identified.
However, in 2018, historians with DPAA discovered that two different burials at the Normandy American Cemetery — which is run by the American Battle Monuments Commission — could contain Hall's remains.
The burials were exhumed and studied using anthropological analysis and DNA sequencing. One of them, listed as "American MIA, X-393 (St. Andre)," was declared to be that of Hall.
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