Defense Department officials announced Wednesday that they have identified the remains of 2nd Lt. Martin P. Murray, a 21-year-old airman from Lowell, Mass., who was missing in action for 68 years, and returned them to his family. Murray is scheduled for burial with full military honors on Saturday in Marshfield, Mass. He was one of 11 airmen lost on Oct. 27, 1943, when their B-24D bomber disappeared over Papua New Guinea during a reconnaissance mission. DOD investigators excavated the crash site in Papua New Guinea in 2007 after a local citizen alerted an earlier DOD forensic team to it several years earlier. Mitochondrial DNA helped in the identification of Murray’s remains. Two of Murray’s recovered crewmates, SSgt. Claude A. Ray and SSgt. Claude G. Tyler, were laid to rest last October.
Navy Adm. Samuel J. Paparo Jr. assumed leadership of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, succeeding Navy Adm. John Aquilino at a change of command ceremony, urging action amid China's “increasing intrusive and expansionist claims,” on May 3