(Tribune News Service) — A Defense Department agency has identified the remains of a World War II airman from Charlotte 81 years after he went missing in action. The announcement was made on Friday, which happened to coincide with the anniversary of D-Day.
U.S. Army Air Forces Tech Sgt. Clarence E. Gibbs was accounted for in March, and his family was recently briefed on his identification, according to the agency.
In late 1944, Gibbs was assigned to the 368th Bombardment Squadron, 306th Bombardment Group, 1st Bombardment Division, 8th Air Force.
While serving, Gibbs received the Air Medal for “exceptionally meritorious achievement,” according to a newspaper report provided by the Defense Department. That report described him as the top turret gunner and flight engineer. His duties were to “protect his aircraft from enemy fighter attack to maintain the mechanical efficiency of the giant bomber in flight,” the report said.
Gibbs went missing in action in December 1944 aboard a B-17G “Flying Fortress” bomber on a mission in Bingen, Germany, according to the Defense Department. His plane got hit by “heavy anti-aircraft fire,” the release said.
“All nine crew members were able to bail out of the aircraft, and only one airman was found dead by German forces near the crash site,” it said. “Five men were captured and processed into the German prisoner of war camp system, ultimately surviving the war. Gibbs and two other crew members were unaccounted for, and there was no record of them being held as POWs.”
An investigation by the organization American Graves Registration Command into what happened to Gibbs began in 1946, the release said. Investigators could not find any information. In 1950, they recommended he be declared non-recoverable.
A breakthrough in the identification case
Greater technology and new information helped researchers to identify Gibbs in the next century.
In 2013, Defense Department researchers learned of documents in a German state archive that detailed “three airmen who had bailed out from their aircraft and been killed by SS troops near Kamp-Bornhofen” in western Germany, according to the release.
The Defense Department agency began an excavation of what officials believed was a burial site in May 2021, where they found remains. Dental analysis, DNA analysis, anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence tied some of the remains to Gibbs, according to the release.
Now, a rosette will be placed next to his name at the Walls of the Missing at Lorraine American Cemetery in France.
Gibbs will be buried in Clinton, South Carolina. A date has not been set yet for the service.
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Precision bombing featured this attack by 100 B-17s on a Focke-Wulf plant at Marienburg on Oct. 9, 1943. (Wikimedia Commons)
