Thursday burial for San Francisco airman missing 70 years gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-7215309|article-gallery-5928241|1 gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-7219336|article-gallery-5928241|2 gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-7219337|article-gallery-5928241|3 gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-7219338|article-gallery-5928241|4 gallery_thumbnails_photo|photo-7223489|article-gallery-5928241|5 The recovered remains of an airman from San Francisco who died in World War II, but was missing for seven decades after his plane was shot down over New Guinea, is being buried Thursday with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. On April 10, 1944, Sgt. Charles A. Gardner took off from the Texter Strip at the Nazdab Air Field in New Guinea, the Department of Defense said. He and 11 others were aboard a B-24D Liberator on a mission to attack an anti-aircraft site about 300 miles to the northwest of the airstrip at Hansa Bay, but their plane was shot down over Madang Province, on the northern coast of the island nation, officials said. Tensions with White House make defense post tough to fill related_link|article-5924876|article-5928241|1 Shrinking pool of contenders to lead Pentagon related_link|article-5928123|article-5928241|2 Four of the crew members were thought to have escaped the crash when they parachuted from the plane, but officials believe all died in captivity. After the war ended, the Army Graves Registration Service scoured the area where the plane went down and recovered remains of three of the airmen, but by 1949 the service concluded that the remaining crew members could not be found, officials said. More than half a century later in 2001, the wreckage of a B-24 Liberator was located with matching tail numbers to the downed plane. A crew from the U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command excavated the site and found the remains of Gardner and seven other airmen, officials said. Gardner was identified using circumstantial evidence recovered from the crash scene as well as DNA, which matched that of a maternal niece and nephew, according to defense officials. Little is known about Gardner’s history in San Francisco before World War II, though a letter informing his mother, May Gardner, of his disappearance was addressed to a home on 29th Avenue near Moraga Street. One of Gardner’s surviving relatives, Ted Gardner, now lives in Manning, S.C. Though he never met his older half-brother, he heard stories of him and spoke with him on a few occasions, according to the local paper. “I knew him through the stories my father would tell, and I certainly talked with him on the phone,” Ted Gardner told the Manning Times. “The day he got the notice that my brother was missing overseas, he sat at the table, put his head down and cried.” The other recovered airmen were: Lts. William D. Bernier of Augusta, Mont., Bryant E. Poulsen of Salt Lake City, Utah, and Herbert V. Young Jr. of Clarkdale, Ariz.; Tech Sgts. Charles L. Johnston of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Hugh F. Moore of Elkton, Md.; and Staff Sgts. John E. Copeland of Dearing, Kan., and Charles J. Jones of Athens, Ga. Kale Williams is a San Francisco Cronickle staff writer. E-mail: kwilliams@sfchronicle Twitter: @sfkale
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 18:10:51 +0000
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