A 20-year-old man killed during World War II has been found, military officials announced Thursday.
U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Ralph H. Bode was assigned to a bombardment squadron in the European theater in late 1944, the Prisoner of War and Missing Persons Accounting Agency said in a news release, and flew with the Hansen crew. Bode was a tail gunner on a B-24H aircraft on a mission over Kassel, Germany.
The plane was shot down after encountering heavy resistance from German ground and air forces. More than two dozen planes were shot down. Some soldiers managed to escape through hatches, but Bode “was not among them,” according to DPAA.
Defense Prisoners of War and Missing Persons Accounting Agency
The War Department issued a “death report” in September 1945, a year after the crash. Bode — who received the Purple Heart, among other citations — left behind his parents, two grandmothers and a brother, according to a news article announcing the funeral.
In September 1951, the American Graves Registration Command, which was searching for and recovering the remains of American personnel in the area, was informed by local residents that several bombers had crashed near Richelsdorf, Germany. Investigators were able to locate the remains of several crashed aircraft based on the information shared, “various pieces of clothing scattered about” and the remains of two servicemen. These remains were believed to be from Bode’s plane.
Defense Prisoners of War and Missing Persons Accounting Agency
These two remains could not be identified at the time and were labeled X-9070 Liège and X-9071 Liège. The remains of X-9070 Liège were interred at the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial, and the remains of X-9071 Liège were interred at the North African American Cemetery and Memorial in Tunisia.
The first batch of remains was exhumed in April 2018, and the second in May 2022. Both were transferred to the DPAA laboratory for analysis. uses a series of techniques to make identificationsand for these sets of remains, scientists used anthropological analysis and mitochondrial analysis.
One of the remains was identified as Bode’s. A rosette will be placed next to his name on the Walls of the Missing at Luxembourg American Cemetery. He will be buried on September 27, 2024, in Racine, Wisconsin.
