Pentagon IDs Missing WWII Airman

The Defense Department has identified remains for 2nd Lt. Harold E. Hoskin, an Army Air Forces airman missing since World War II. Hoskin was one of five crewmen on a B-24 that left Fairbanks, Alaska on Dec. 21, 1943 on a cold-weather test mission. The aircraft did not return to base, and it would be almost three months before they learned from surviving crewman 1st Lt. Leon Crane of the aircraft’s crash upon losing an engine. Crane was one of two who parachuted out and survived in the Alaska wilderness. He led a recovery team to the crash site in 1944, but the team suspected Hoskins also had managed to parachute out when his remains were not found with two other crewmen. In 2006, a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command team located a site identified by a Park Service historian and found remains subsequently identified as belonging to Hoskins.