On April 28, 2021, a recovery team of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) of the U.S. Department of Defense found the remains of an U.S. Army Air Forces pilot shot down near Wiener Neustadt, Austria, during World War II. Although his identity has not yet been confirmed by DNA analysis, it presumed that the remains found belong to Lt. Henry Donald Mitchell of Arkansas. He has been missing in action since July 8, 1944, when his aircraft, a Lockheed P-38 Lightning, was shot down during a mission over Lower Austria.
The discovery of Lt. Mitchell’s remains is the result of a concerted effort on both sides of the Atlantic to retrieve the remains of this WWII veteran from Austria back to the U.S; on the forefront, Arkansas Senator John Boozman, Austrian Ambassador Martin Weiss, as well as Martin Eichtinger, Secretary for Housing, Labour and International Relations of the State of Lower Austria.
The search and excavation operations on the crash site were conducted over the past few weeks by a DPAA recovery team assisted by the Austrian Armed Forces and the U.S. Embassy in Vienna.
The remains of Lt. Mitchell will be repatriated to the U.S. after completion of the analysis and identification. As a special honor for the fallen pilot, a restored Lockheed P-38 of Salzburg’s The Flying Bulls flew over the site, where Lt. Mitchell’s remains were found.
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