HEADLINES:
R/€ 
R/£ Divers find remains of WW II airman
October 29, 2009 Edition 1
HIGHLAND, California: For two decades after her son's bomber went down in the Pacific Ocean during World War II, Vella Stinson faithfully wrote to the US government twice a month to ask if his body had been found.
She went to her grave without the answer that has finally reached her two surviving sons 65 years later: the remains of Sergeant Robert Stinson are coming home.
Military divers recovered several pieces of leg bone from the wreckage of a B-24J Liberator bomber found off the coast of the island nation of Palau. DNA testing showed the femur fragments belonged to the 24-year-old flight engineer who died on September 1, 1944.
Stinson's remains arrived under US Air Force escort yesterday and will be buried tomorrow at Riverside National Cemetery with full military honours.
"He's not someplace on a little island or at the bottom of the ocean. He's home," said Edward Stinson, who was nine when his brother died.
"We knew that three of them had got out of the plane and ... you always hope that one of them would be him and that maybe he survived," Richard Stinson.
Four other missing crewmen were also identified and are being returned to their families. - Sapa-AP
© 1999 - 2010 Cape Argus & Independent Online (Pty) Ltd. All rights reserved.