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.
The Department of the Air Force will be taking over the Pentagon’s prototype Joint Fires Network, or JFN, as it transitions to a fully fledged program of record, program executive officer for command, control, communications, and battle management Maj. Gen. Luke C.G. Cropsey told reporters Sept. 18.