Remains of WWII airmen buried at Arlington

ARLINGTON, Va.-- Even for Arlington National Cemetery, yesterday's burial service was extraordinary: remains from nine World War II airmen shot down and killed after a successful bombing run in Papua New Guinea in 1943.

The remains, excavated from the crash site in 2001, were in a single coffin because most could not be conclusively linked to any one airman.

It had been 68 years since Leonard Gionet's father was shot down, and he did not expect the service to be especially emotional. After all, he was only 6 months old when his father died. But he found himself wiping tears as he sat next to his 90-year-old mother. "I had kind of buried it all. I was surprised by all the emotions that surfaced," he said afterward.

The burial brings a close to the remarkable story of the Naughty but Nice, a B-17 Flying Fortress that was shot down in 1943 and earned its nickname from a painting of a scantily clad woman on its side. Nine of the 10 airmen on board were killed and buried in unmarked graves. The lone survivor, Lt. Jose Holguin, was taken as a Japanese prisoner of war but made it his mission after the war to find his lost colleagues.

Holguin traveled back to Papua New Guinea several times in the 1980s and found parts of the plane. In 1985, the Army exhumed remains that had been buried as "unknown" at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu after they were recovered from Papua New Guinea after the war.

Tests done then positively identified remains from five of the nine killed: 2nd Lt. Herman H. Knott, 2nd Lt. Francis G. Peattie, Staff Sgt. Henry Garcia, Staff Sgt. Robert E. Griebel and Staff Sgt. Pace P. Payne.

The Army did further excavations near the crash site in 2001 and found more remains. More advanced tests were done but didn't conclusively link those remains to any of the remaining four: Tech Sgt. Robert L. Christopherson, Tech Sgt. Leonard A. Gionet, 1st Lt. William Sarsfield and 2nd Lt. Charles E. Trimingham. But the Army is confident the remains belong to the nine men, in part based on where they were found.