Gregg Jamison, a UW–Milwaukee at Waukesha anthropology professor, was the principal investigator on site. Erin Womersley of Sun Prairie served as interpreter. Daniel Hummel, a postdoctoral fellow in history, contributed research before the team left for France. Ryan Wubben, medical director of UW Med Flight, is a mainstay on excavations. But help comes from across campus and Wisconsin. Stone’s case, according to Konsitzke, were students who joined the MIA Project as undergraduates, like recent grads Tristan Krause, Torrey Tiedeman and Samantha Zinnen. This year, as many as 30 colleges and universities will follow UW–Madison’s lead, lending expertise in disciplines including history, languages and archaeology to DPAA’s search efforts. It makes us want to do what we can to help find people, so we can bring them home to families that remember them.” “It’s been almost 75 years since these soldiers were lost, and that means every day there are fewer people left who have personal connections to them,” Konsitzke says. The rest of his World War II bomber-escort mission never saw him again. Stone disappeared with his P-47 Thunderbolt into a cloud bank 16,000 feet over northern France. Stone is the third missing member of America’s armed forces the MIA Project has successfully removed from the rolls of WWII missing - a list that still runs more than 72,000 names. UW–Madison’s first search was in 2013, and the university became DPAA’s first academic partner in 2016.

“The reason you’re there and what you’re looking for is always on your mind.” “It’s hard work and long hours, but everyone is so careful,” says Charles Konsitzke, associate director of the UW Biotechnology Center and facilitator for the MIA Project. 50 caliber machine guns, gnarled by the force and heat of the crash) along with the pilot’s remains and some of the personal items he was carrying. They recovered identifying parts of Stone’s plane (like. Using picks and shovels they carried into the forest every day, hauling dirt by buckets to sifting stations they built alongside the dig, the MIA Project group worked 10 to 12 hours a day, six days a week. Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). Team members are pictured during the soldier recovery mission, which was a joint effort between the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the U.S. We couldn’t be more grateful.”Īfter months of preparation, members of UW–Madison’s MIA Project spent three weeks in the woods near Saint-Omer, carefully clearing trees and tons of earth from a site where in 2017 DPAA investigators had found Walter Stone’s identification tags. I can’t tell you how it feels to be able to do that for her, and the day before Mother’s Day. “Mama Stone, my great-grandmother, died when I was in my 20s, but we all knew she always thought he would come home. Everybody in the family has heard stories like that about Buster,” says Mark Stone, now 55. “In his mind, his brother was in one of those bombers he was escorting.

Mark Stone, son of one of Buster’s nephews, was told Buster became a fighter pilot because the P-47s protected bombers, and one of Buster’s brothers was a navigator on a bomber in the European theater. He was interred May 11 with military honors in Andalusia in a family plot near his mother Lilla’s grave.įour of Lilla’s seven sons served in World War II at the same time. Through genetic testing, the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) confirmed the remains to be Stone’s in February. The rest of his World War II bomber-escort mission never saw him again, but in August 2018 a team from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project unearthed the wreckage of Stone’s plane and his remains from a crash site in a national forest near Saint-Omer, France. “Buster” Stone, a 24-year-old pilot from Andalusia, Alabama, disappeared with his P-47 Thunderbolt into a cloud bank 16,000 feet over northern France.

It had been more than 75 years since 2nd Lt. Buster Stone became a fighter pilot because the P-47s protected bombers, and one of his brothers was a navigator on a bomber in the European theater.

Ww ii fighter pilot