https://dpaa-mil.sites.crmforce.mil/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000001J4tU5EAJ

On April 20, 2011, the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO, now DPAA) identified the remains of Second Lieutenant Arthur W. Luce, missing from World War II.

Second Lieutenant Luce entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from California and served in the 578th Bombardment Squadron, 392nd Bombardment Group (Heavy). On April 29, 1944, he was the copilot of a B-24J Liberator (serial number 42-110105) during a bombing mission against the Friedrichstrasse Railroad Station in Berlin, Germany. This Liberator was shot down by enemy fighters before it reached the target. It crashed near East Meitze, Germany, killing 2LT Luce and the other nine crew members aboard. The bomb load exploded after the crash and scattered the wreckage. Following the war, two of bodies that had been buried nearby were recovered and identified, but 2LT Luce remained missing until 2003 when a German civilian relocated the crash site and alerted U.S. authorities. In 2005, a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) team excavated the site and recovered human remains and military equipment. Scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification laboratory used modern forensic tools and DNA analyses to eventually identify 2LT Luce from among the recovered remains.

Second Lieutenant Luce is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten.

Arthur W Luce