Statement from MELINDA F. MORGAN, Lt. Col., USAF
Public Affairs – Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office on identifying remains of 1st Lt. Louis Logman of Clinton
U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Louis L. Longman, 26, of Clinton, Iowa, has been accounted for. On April 16, 1944, Longman was the pilot of a P-38J Lightning aircraft that departed Nadzab, New Guinea, as part of a bomber escort mission against enemy targets on the island. His aircraft crashed and never returned after the mission, which came to be known as “Black Sunday”
due to the extensive loss of American lives that day. Search and recovery efforts were unsuccessful.
A Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) team was investigating sites in the mountains of Papua New Guinea in February 2005, when two villagers turned over human remains that they claimed to have recovered from a wartime crash near their village. The team was not able to survey the site at that time.
From 2007 to 2010, JPAC survey and excavation teams recovered additional remains and aircraft wreckage from the site.
To identify Longman’s remains, scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) used circumstantial evidence and forensic identification tools such as dental comparisons and mitochondrial DNA.
Lt. Longman (image provided by Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office)
