More WW2 for the day

Joseph A. Gambardello has an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

On 1 November 1946, a B-17 Flying Fortress on a flight from Naples to an airfield outside London slammed into the Mont Blanc mountain range with such force that the wreckage and remains of its eight airmen were scattered over a wide area on both sides of the Italian-French border. Eight months later, the mountain known as the Aiguilles des Glaciers started to give up the wreckage and dead in a process that continued for more than three decades. The body parts were interred at Arlington National Cemetery under a tombstone bearing the names of all those lost.
Now, thanks to DNA testing, some of the remains have been identified as those of Staff Sergeant Zoltan Joseph Dobovich, originally of Riegelsville in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They were returned to Dobovich's family in a ceremony at Philadelphia International Airport after a flight from the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Honolulu.
Veterans belonging to the Patriots Guard and Warriors Watch provided a motorcycle escort for the hearse on the trip to the funeral home in Mount Holly.
A military funeral will be held at the Brigadier General William C. Doyle Veterans Cemetery in North Hanover Township in Burlington County, New Jersey, and Governor Christie has ordered the American and New Jersey flags to fly at half staff at state facilities in Dobovich's honor.
Carlton Dobovich, the airman's nephew, who was born after Sergeant Dobovch died, said the family was grateful that his remains had been identified. "It really feels good knowing he's been identified and we'll have him close so we can visit him," he said.
Carlton's father, Anthony, a World War Two veteran who died in 2006, is buried in the same cemetery. His father and uncle were very close as boys, and Anthony Dobovich would be "delirious" if he were alive to learn his brother's remains finally had been identified, Carlton Dobovich said.
Zoltan Dobovich was the youngest of five children, the nephew said. Their parents were Hungarian immigrant farmers, and their father died when Zoltan was a young boy.
Zoltan Dobovich was eighteen when he joined the Army in Allentown on 7 December 1943, the second anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. After serving in the infantry, he joined the Army Air Corps as a radioman during the war. It was in that position that he boarded the postwar flight from Naples to the Bovingdon airfield northwest of London. Also on board were Colonel Ford L. Fair, chief of staff of the European Air Transport Service, and Colonel Hudson H. Upham, assistant chief of staff for traffic for the service, who was listed as the pilot on the flight manifest.
The purpose of the predawn flight remains unknown, and Carlton Dobovich said his efforts to get an answer have been unsuccessful. After the plane failed to arrive at Bovingdon, it was reported missing. An air search for the missing plane was called off after eighteen days, according to the European-based Committee for the Commemoration of the Crew of the B-17 of the Aiguilles des Glaciers. An inquiry established that the plane was about ninety miles off course when it hit the mountain for reasons unknown.
In July of 1947, a French army alpine unit chanced upon the crash site. It recovered documents and the remains were interred that October at Arlington.
Between 1972 and 1988, as the glacier atop the mountain retreated, additional wreckage and remains were recovered on the Italian side of the border.
DNA testing recently established that some of the remains belonged to the 21-year-old Dobovich. Carlton Dobovich said the match was made from Barbara Rice, a cousin in Georgia whom they had not known existed.
In an email, Francis Raout, a young soldier in the French unit that found the wreckage in 1947, said he was grateful to have "rendered service" to the nation "whose sons liberated France. I would never have thought that, in 2012, I could offer my sincere condolences to the family of Zoltan Dobovich," he said.
Also killed in the crash were Major Lawrence L. Cobb, the copilot; Lieutenant Alfred D. Ramirez, the navigator; Master Sergeant John E. Gilbert, the flight engineer; Technical Sergeant William S. Cassell, the assistant radio operator; and Staff Sergeant William A. Hilton, the assistant engineer.
Carlton Dobovich said he had been informed that the remains of only four airmen have been identified.
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, which is in charge of identifying military remains, did not respond to a request for additional information.
Besides his nephew, Dobovich's survivors who are still alive include his niece Rosalie Baker and nephew Joseph Dobovich.

Rico says that it's nice, after all these years, for them to be properly buried...