Pilot identified nearly 80 years after his plane was shot down in World War II
By KCCI Staff
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DES MOINES, Iowa (KCCI) — A U.S. Army Air Forces major from Iowa, who was killed during World War II, has finally been accounted for.
Maj. Theodore Willhite, of Muscatine, was 26 years old when his plane was hit during a 1944 German bombing raid near France. All 11 crew members on board died in the crash.
Scientists from the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System have been working to identify his remains.
They used mitochondrial DNA analysis and finally confirmed his remains in September and his family recently got a full briefing on his identity.
His name is already memorialized on a monument in France.
Willhite’s family is working to decide a place and time for his burial.
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