Body believed to be WWII airman removed from glacier after decades in ice

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - An ice-encased body believed to be that of a Second World War airman who crashed in 1942 was chipped out of a Sierra Nevada glacier and taken to a laboratory for identification, a deputy coroner said Thursday.

Blustery weather kept rangers at Kings Canyon National Park from reaching the frozen remains for two days after ice climbers reported last weekend they had seen a man's head, shoulder and arm protruding from the thick ice.

About 80 per cent of the body was buried in the glacier on 4,180-metre-high Mount Mendel. The area can only be reached by hiking two or three days, or by helicopter when the weather allows.

Six park rangers and a military forensics expert started chipping away at the ice on Wednesday, freeing the body after about six hours, said ranger Alexandra Picavet.

"The ice initially wasn't bad to dig through, but then as they got deeper it became more difficult," said Picavet, who wasn't among the rangers who excavated the remains.

The crew had to be careful not to damage the body and worked slowly because they didn't know how it was positioned, Picavet said. The remains were then flown to the Fresno County coroner's department.

The identification effort will include a team from the Joint Prisoner of War Accounting Command, Deputy Coroner Robert Glasbie said. The command recovers and identifies missing military personnel, and its team will include a forensic anthropologist and a pathologist.


Park officials summoned the military agency because the man was wearing a parachute stencilled "Army." They believe he may be a crewman of an AT-7 navigational training plane that crashed Nov. 18, 1942. Several military planes crashed among the craggy peaks in the 1930s and 1940s.

Plane wreckage and four bodies were found by a climber in 1947. It's impossible to tell if this body is connected to that expedition until the identification process, which will include a thorough examination of the clothing and any documents that may still exist, plus dental records, X-rays or DNA testing on the body.

Military officials said there are 88,000 Americans still missing from past wars, 78,000 of them from the Second World War.

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