Frozen Airman May Have Been From St. C Area

The Intelligencer Wheeling News-Register ^ | 051023 | JENNIFER COMPSTON-STROUGH And CHANA DIEHL

[leadpenny]

More than 60 years have passed since U.S. Army Air Forces aviation Cadet Ernest Munn disappeared along with the rest of his flight crew over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, but investigators and family members believe the Belmont County man's remains may finally have been found.

A pilot and three crew members died when their plane crashed into the icy peak, and their names were etched on a military gravestone even though most of their actual remains were not recovered.

On Friday, a coroner was examining fresh clues revealed earlier this week by a receding glacier in the Sierra Nevada. She hopes to identify the frozen body of a fair-haired World War II airman that climbers on Oct. 16 found intact and still wearing his parachute. Determining his identity could solve part of the decades-old mystery about what happened after an AT-7 navigational training plane left a Sacramento airfield on Nov. 18, 1942, on a routine training flight through the Central Valley - never to be heard from again.

Jeanne Pyle, 85, of Pleasant Grove is Munn's oldest sister. She described her brother as "real outgoing," noting that "everybody loved him."

"We really missed our only brother," she said Saturday, noting that each of the four men aboard the downed craft were the only sons in their respective families.

"He sort of looked after us and took care of us when we were all out on the farm. We all got along so well together. We were not like the children of today who get bored. We were busy all the time working on the farm, and we sold things to make money. It was a quiet life."

According to Pyle, the Munn family - consisting of parents Joseph and Sadie, their son Ernest and daughters Jeanne, Lois and Sarah, all of whom were two years apart - lived on a farm along U.S. 250 in Pleasant Grove.

Joseph operated a service station, and all the children were born in Farmington about 2 miles away.

Ernest attended St. Clairsville High School for two years, she said, before transferring to Martins Ferry High School, graduating in 1936 to the best of Pyle's recollection. He was the oldest child in the family. Following graduation, he went to work with an aunt at Fidelity Investment Association on Main Street in Wheeling. He never married.

"He was very sweet on a little girl from Wheeling, and they were planning to get married ... but he didn't make it," Pyle said, explaining that her brother did not want to get married before entering the military. "They were truly in love with each other."

Following her brother's disappearance, Pyle said, people from the family's church and members of their extended family would check to see if there was any word about him and offer their condolences. She pointed out that because many families were losing young men to World War II, there was no special observance of the loss in the community.

"It was awfully hard on my mother. She had trouble facing it," Pyle said. "She was a farm girl and never hardly out this part country, but she went clear to California on a train to see what she could find out. They had services while she was out there, for her sake. They even had a plot in a soldiers' cemetery and had a stone for him there."

Pyle said she is not sure what it will mean to her and her two sisters if, in fact, the remains found in the mountains turn out to be those of her brother.

"We're trying to figure out whether they will bring his body back here," she said, noting that her sister Lois Shriver of Pittsburgh believes his body may be taken to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Sarah Zeyer, the middle sister of the family who also lives in Belmont County, still recalls what it was like to lose a brother and never know for sure what happened.

"We did a lot of worrying and just wondered why that had happened to him," she said.

She described her brother as "very loving with his three younger sisters" and recalled that he was a good student who excelled in math and history. She also remembered that he played baseball and croquet every Sunday with the visitors that always seemed to be at their house after church.

"We'd given up all hope,'' said 80-year-old Shriver, the youngest sister of Munn. "Living without knowing whatever happened, that was hard.''

Shriver was 17 and living at home in Pleasant Grove when news came that her brother's plane was missing. The possibility that his body was recently found raises expectations and brings back hard memories. Like the body found this week, her brother also had blond hair.

Zeyer said the body that was discovered in the mountains has been sent to Hawaii for examination, but knowing that the young man in question had blond hair, she said she is "pretty certain that they (investigators) think it's him."

"They found him in a hunk of ice, and he was preserved pretty well," she said. "I was just stunned for a moment (when contacted about the discovery) because it had been so long for us to hear anything."

If the remains do turn out to be those of her brother, Zeyer hopes the military will send the body back to Belmont County for burial.

"It will be a closure for us. We didn't know where he was. It will be sad, but at least we'll know he's here at home."

In 1947, an engine from the plane, clothing, a dog tag and scattered human remains were discovered far off the plane's course and the crew members were given a ceremonial burial.

A single headstone bears the names of Munn; the pilot, 2nd Lt. William A. Gamber, 23, of Fayette, Ohio; and two other aviation cadets - John M. Mortenson, 25, of Moscow, Idaho; and Leo M. Mustonen, 22, of Brainerd, Minn.

Military personnel, rangers, highway patrol officers, loggers and others spent about a month looking for the craft before the search was suspended in December 1942, a time of year when the Sierra is typically buried deep in snow.

Climbers found the wreckage and the identification tag of Mortenson in the remote backcountry of Kings Canyon National Park in 1947 on a steep glacier near Mount Darwin and Mount Mendel, above Evolution Valley.

One of the climbers who found the debris led the Air Rescue Service and rangers to the site on Sept. 27, 1947, to confirm the crash site.

"A small piece of frozen flesh was found on a spur of rock at upper edge of glacier,'' according to a copy of the report posted on Accident-Report.com, a Web site that tracks military crashes. "Small pieces of clothing and a blank navigation log ... were found in the vicinity of the flesh. Insufficient remains were found for identification of bodies or to indicate the number of persons aboard.''

The search team concluded that further investigation was inadvisable because of dangerous conditions and because the debris was scattered and buried in snow and ice.

The crew was honored with a military burial at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, one of the largest military graveyards on the West Coast.

On Friday, Fresno County coroner Loralee Cervantes was thawing the body and searching for other clues, such as a military identification number on clothing, that might help name the man.

"If we're lucky, we'll be able to read something,'' Cervantes said.

A team of forensic experts and military body recovery specialists have been working to melt away the 400-pound block of ice and granite that encased the body when it was airlifted from the side of 13,710-foot Mount Mendel on Wednesday, Cervantes said.

Climbers found his head and arm jutting out of solid ice in the Mendel glacier on Oct. 16, but difficult conditions kept a search team from reaching the site for two days.

The ice preserved the body's skin and muscle, as well as the man's sun-bleached hair and his green uniform, including thermal undershirt and sweater, Cervantes said. The team also uncovered a fountain pen, a sewing kit and the rip cord for his unopened parachute.

Shriver said she thinks the body could be her brother, but she's cautious. As recently as two years ago, she visited his grave even though she knew there was nothing of him there.

"It was just for closure,'' said Shriver. "No one will ever know what we felt until they go through it.''

"I guess life just moves on, you know," said Pyle. "We went quite a few years and just gave up that they would ever find them, but we never quit thinking about him and missing him."

[HisKingdomWillAbolishSinDeath]

See here, when I die make sure I'm gone
Don't leave 'em nothing to work on
You can raise your arm, you can wiggle your hand
And you can wave good-bye to the frozen man
I know what it means to freeze to death
To lose a little life with every breath
To say good-bye to life on earth
To come around again
Lord have mercy on the frozen man

[de Buillion]

I hope that this hero is identified and recieves the burial services requested by the survivors.

[ChefKeith]

RIP Sir

Ping

[leadpenny]

Body Frozen in Glacier May Be WWII Airman

[Daaave]

I think I saw this guy on the news. I'm not sure. I heard they found somebody. I looked up and saw the remains surrounded by white. He looked like a burn victim?

[leadpenny]

There's a photo at the link.

[Decepticon]

Bump for an airman returning home......

[leadpenny]

Bump

[Rudder]

St.Clairsville...37 miles from here.

[DJ MacWoW]

ping

[leadpenny]

Prayers for the family.

[Rudder]

I didn't know the deceased, but my uncle, who served in WWII, recalls the family.

Nice folk...my prayers to all of them.

[leadpenny]

If you can do it, please pass along the prayers to the family from Free Republic. I just hope that Cadet Munn's three sisters are able to have closure.

I don't know anyone from the Wheeling area but for some reason I like the "Intelligencer" site. I'll keep looking for updates on the identification process.

[Rudder]

If you can do it, please pass along the prayers to the family from Free Republic.

Done.
I visited my uncle and his sister (my mom) this evening.

[AnAmericanMother]

Yes, the freeze-drying that occurs when a body is preserved in a glacier darkens the skin. The flesh will be severely dehydrated but intact. Bodies such as "Ötzi" (the Stone Age man found in the Alpine glacier) are splendidly preserved (from an archaeological/forensic point of view).

There should be no problem identifying him from his clothing and personal effects. He ought to have his dog tags under his outer layer of clothing, once they have thawed the body and removed the clothes they should find them. Even if there is no notebook, logbook, ID card or laundry mark on the clothing, with three surviving siblings DNA testing will be straightforward.

I hope that it is indeed this young man and they give him a fine funeral - at Arlington or at home, if his sisters want him to be buried there.

Home is the sailor, home from sea
And the hunter home from the hill.

[SunkenCiv]

I thought we'd had a similar topic (earlier) in the GGG, but didn't find it. Five others are going in with this one.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)

[leadpenny]

Reference

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1571643/posts