B-24 PILOT TO BE HONORED NOV. 11 IN FORT BRAGG: REMAINS OF BOMBER CREW LOST DURING 1944 MISSION NOT UNEARTHED UNTIL 2005

The remains of Army Air Forces 2nd Lt. Arthur W. Luce were buried last week at Arlington National Cemetery, 67 years after he after he perished during a bombing mission over Germany.

On Nov. 11, he will be honored during a Veterans Day ceremony in Fort Bragg, his hometown of record.

Luce was piloting a B-24J Liberator aircraft on a bombing mission over Berlin on April 29, 1944 when the plane was shot down near the town of Meitze, north of Hanover.

All 10 men aboard the bomber died, according to the Defense Department.

Luce enlisted in the Army Air Forces on Jan. 15, 1942, in Los Angeles, about the time it appears Luce's family moved to Fort Bragg.

School officials said an Emily Luce attended Fort Bragg schools for the first time in 1942 and graduated from Fort Bragg High School in 1948.

The story of Luce's service is told in records from the Department of Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office and fold3, a website dedicated to military history.

He was deployed to Europe with the 8th Air Force, 14th Combat Bombardment Wing, 392nd Bombardment Group, stationed near the village of Beeston in Norfolk, England.

The group flew its first combat missions in September 1943, and took part in the intensive bombing campaign against the German aircraft industry in February 1944. It was awarded a Distinguished Unit Citation for bombing an aircraft factory at Gotha.

On April 29, 1944, Luce flew as a pilot in the right seat of a B-24 on a mission to bomb the gas works at Berlin. En route, the aircraft was attacked by enemy fighters and suffered heavy damage, spiraling downward and crashing in a horse pasture near the town of East Meitze.

No parachutes were seen. About an hour after the impact, a bomb exploded in the wreckage, destroying much of what remained of the plane.

German forces buried the remains of three of the men near Hanover shortly after the crash, according to Defense Department officials. Their remains were exhumed and reburied in a U.S. military cemetery in Belgium in 1946.

In 2003, a German man located what remained of the bomber and the rest of the crew. The site was excavated in 2005 and remains of the crew were located. Recovered artifacts included a class ring with the initials AWL, which presumably belonged to Luce, according to the Defense Department.

DNA and dental records helped identify the men's remains, officials said.

In a ceremony with full military honors, the remains were buried last week in a single casket representing the entire crew, said defense department spokeswoman Jessica Pierno.

A department spokeswoman said Luce's closest relative lives in Washington and requested anonymity.

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com.