Full military honors accompanied the Oct. 10 burial at Arlington National Cemetery of the remains of 1st Lt. Shannon E. Estill, Army Air Forces airman killed in World War II. The Cedar Rapids, Iowa, native, was lost during a mission April 13, 1945, when his P-38J Lightning was hit by enemy antiaircraft fire in eastern Germany. A Pentagon release said that his remains could not be recovered after the war because his aircraft crashed inside the Russian-controlled sector of occupied Germany, an area then inaccessible to US military forces. A team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command investigated a crash site near Elsnig in 2003, and a second team, in 2005, excavated the site, finding human remains and P-38 wreckage.
A legislative standoff has led to a lapse in a $4.26 billion small business innovation contracting program widely used by the Air Force and could spell the end of it entirely, industry sources warned Air & Space Forces Magazine.
