Remains of 20-year-old airman shot down during WWII identified

A 20-year-old who was killed during World War II has been accounted for, military officials announced on Thursday.

U.S. Army Air Force Staff Sgt. Ralph H. Bode was assigned to a bombardment squadron in the European Theater in late 1944, the Department POW/MIA Accounting Agency said in a news release , and flew with the Hansen Crew . Bode was a tail gunner on a B-24H aircraft during a mission over Kassel, Germany.

The aircraft was shot down after encountering heavy resistance from German ground and air forces. Over two dozen aircraft were downed. Some soldiers escaped through hatches, but Bode "was not among them," according to the DPAA.

The War Department issued a "finding of death" in September 1945, a year after the crash. Bode - who earned the Purple Heart, among other citations - was survived by his parents, two grandmothers and one brother, according to a news clipping announcing memorial services.

In September 1951, the American Graves Registration Command, which searched for and recovered the remains of American personnel in that region, were told by local residents about several bombers that had crashed outside of Richelsdorf, Germany. Investigators were able to locate remains of multiple crashed planes based on the shared information, "various bits of scattered clothing," and remains of two servicemembers. Those remains were believed to have come from Bode's aircraft.

Those two remains could not be identified at the time and were labeled X-9070 Liege and X-9071 Liege. The X-9070 Liege remains were interred at the Luxembourg America Cemetery in Luxembourg, and the X-9071 Liege remains were interred at the North African American Cemetery in Tunisia.

The first set of remains was exhumed in April 2018, and the second set in May 2022. Both were transferred to the DPAA laboratory for analysis. The agency uses a series of techniques to make identifications , and for these sets of remains, scientists used anthropological analysis and mitochondrial analysis.

One of the sets of remains was identified as Bode's. A rosette will be placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing at the Luxembourg American Cemetery. He will be buried on Sept. 27, 2024, in Racine, Wisconsin.