Body of Tuskegee airman positively identified after eight decades

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Defense Department officials have identified the remains of a Tuskegee pilot who went missing during World War II 79 years ago, ABC News reports. 

According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPPA), Second Lt. Fred L. Brewer Jr. went missing on Oct. 19, 1944, while on a bomber escort mission with 56 other fighters over enemy targets in Regensburg, Germany. The North Carolina native flew a single-seat P-51C Mustang nicknamed “Traveling Light” out of Ramitelli Air Field in Italy when heavy cloud cover forced several fighters to return to the base early.

Brewer was not among the 47 fighters who returned to base, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

“Reports from other pilots on the mission indicate that 2nd Lt. Brewer had been attempting to climb his aircraft out of the cloud cover but stalled out and fell into a spin,” the agency said. 

There was no evidence that Brewer ejected from the plane. According to the agency, local news reported him missing at the time and eventually declared him dead. 

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U.S. personnel recovered a body from a civilian cemetery in the area after the war, but it was impossible to identify the remains using the technology at the time. The body was buried as an unknown. 

Research conducted on the case in 2011 revealed the remains were recovered from a crashed fighter plane the same day that Brewer disappeared. German wartime records confirmed this information, according to the agency.

The remains were sent to a DPAA laboratory in June 2022 for further analysis. Based on the combined evidence, the remains were identified as those of 2LT Brewer last month.

Brewer joined the U.S. Army Air Forces in November 1943 and graduated from Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama in 1944, ABC News reports. He was a Tuskegee Airman and a member of the 100th Fighter Squadron, 332nd Fighter Group.  

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The Tuskegee Airmen flew combat missions during World War II as the country’s first African American military aviators. Tuskegee University is estimated to have trained about 1,000 Black pilots. 

Brewer’s name appears at the Florence American Cemetery in Impruneta, Italy, on the Tablets of the Missing, accordign to ABC News. His cousin, Robena Brewer Harrison, told The Washington Post they hope to bury his remains in Charlotte.

“I remember how devastating it was when they notified my family, my aunt and uncle, that he was missing,” Harrison told The Washington Post. “It just left a void within our family. My aunt, who was his mother, Janie, she never, ever recovered from that.”

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