syscom3
Pacific Historian
SAN ANTONIO, Tex. -- The body of U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Dudley Ives is set to return to his Texas home after being lost in New Guinea nearly 63 years ago.
The Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times reported that since Ives' plane was downed by a massive storm on April 16, 1944, the airman's body was lost until plane wreckage was found in 2002.
Among the wreckage discovered in the jungles of Papua, New Guinea, authorities found 10 bodies and using DNA from relatives of Ives, eventually determined he was among them.
"It will be a very happy day," Rodney Ives, the airman's son, said of the body's return. "Just that his bones are out of the jungle in New Guinea and coming back to Ingleside."
The paper said that while the airman was born in Rockport, Texas, he resided in the nearby city of Ingleside with his family before joining the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942.
