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FORT KNOX, Ky. – The remains of U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Charles G. Reynolds, a Soldier killed during World War II, will be interred Sept. 23 at Weeks Cemetery, Bridgeport, Ohio. Wilson Funeral Home, Bridgeport, will perform graveside services preceding the interment.
A native of Bridgeport, Reynolds was a pilot assigned to the 498th Bombardment Squadron, 345th Bombardment Group, in the Southwest Pacific Theater. He was serving aboard a B-25D Mitchell as a crewmember Nov. 27, 1943, when it did not return from its bombing mission near Wewak, New Guinea. The aircraft had sustained heavy damage from enemy anti-aircraft fire and the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing in the waters of Karau Lagoon, in the Murik Lakes. The crew was labeled missing in action - Reynolds’s remains could not be recovered. He was 24 years old.
Following the war, the American Graves Registration Service conducted exhaustive searches of battle areas and crash sites in New Guinea, recovering fragmentary sets of human remains near Murik, as well as wreckage identified as belonging to a B-25 Mitchell. Remains, designated X-4180 and X-4196, were declared unidentifiable and interred at Fort McKinley Cemetery in Manila.
Possible material evidence recovered near Murik in 2019 prompted Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency historians and forensic anthropologists to propose the disinterment of X-4180, which was exhumed for laboratory identification in 2020.
Reynolds was accounted for by the DPAA July 18, 2023, after his remains were identified using circumstantial and material evidence as well as dental, anthropological and mitochondrial DNA analysis.
His name is recorded on the Walls of the Missing at Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines, along with others still missing from World War II. A rosette will be placed next to his name to indicate he has been accounted for.
For additional information about 1st Lt. Reyolds, go to: https://www.dpaa.mil/News-Stories/News-Releases/PressReleaseArticleView/Article/3522227/airman-accounted-for-from-wwii-reynolds-c/
To learn more about the Department of Defense’s mission to account for Americans who went missing while serving our country, visit the DPAA website at www.dpaa.mil, www.facebook.com/dodpaa, or call 703-699-1420/1169.
Media interested in covering and/or obtaining more information about the funeral and interment should contact the Army Casualty Office at 800-892-2490 and/or Wilson Funeral Home, 740-635-0651.
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| Date Taken: | 09.18.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 09.18.2023 09:49 |
| Story ID: | 453643 |
| Location: | FORT KNOX, KENTUCKY, US |
| Web Views: | 145 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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