Kiowa Co. WWII Airman officially accounted for

KIOWA CO., Okla. (KSWO) - An airman from Kiowa County, who was killed during World War II, has finally been accounted for.

2nd Lieutenant Wayne L. Dyer of Hobart was a B-17 Navigator when his aircraft was shot down during a mission over Germany on May 29, 1944.

According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), 6 of the 10 crew members were able to escape the B-17 before crashing, while the remaining 4 were killed.

After the war ended, no evidence was recovered of Dyer being a prisoner of war or surviving the war, so a year later, it was presumed he had been killed during the crash.

Several of the airman were then buried in a local German cemetery.

In 1953, Dyer was declared non-recoverable, despite the American Graves Registration Command finding one of his fellow crew members in a cemetery in Horst.

Unfortunately, the Soviet Union controlled that part of Germany at the time, and prevented AGRC from investigating further.

In 2019, an investigation team with DPAA was able to excavate the cemetery, where they recovered material evidence and DNA from the remains, and then transferred samples to a DPAA laboratory in Nebraska.

2nd Lieutenant Wayne Dyer was officially accounted for on September 9th.

He will be buried on a date yet to be determined in Killeen, Texas.

For family and funeral information you can contact the Army Casualty Office, at (800) 892-2490

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