A ball turret gunner lost since Dec. 26, 1944, was laid to rest in Glouster, Ohio, last week after a DNA breakthrough identified his remains nearly 82 years after his B-24 Liberator broke apart over Poland and killed all nine men aboard. U.S. Army Air Forces Sgt. Myron Lee Yaw, a Glouster native, had been missing since the crash, and his family only recently learned his remains had finally been recovered and confirmed.
Yaw served in the 828th Bombardment Squadron, 485th Bombardment Group, according to the Defense Department's news service DVIDS. On the day he died, he was the ball turret gunner aboard a B-24J Liberator flying a mission against an oil refinery in Blechhammer, Germany, when anti-aircraft fire tore into the aircraft. The plane broke in two and went down near the Polish village of Korzonek, killing Yaw and the rest of the crew.
It would take decades, and a small army of investigators, to bring him home. A Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency team completed an archaeological survey of the crash site in 2018, DVIDS reports, and a DPAA partner organization then spent years, from 2021 through 2025, excavating the wreckage. Human remains and other evidence recovered there were sent to a DPAA laboratory for analysis.
A Family Marked Twice by War
DPAA accounted for Yaw on June 25, 2026, and the news meant Yaw's family would finally get to bury him, something generations of Yaws never expected to see.
Myron Lee Yaw was born Oct. 4, 1924, in Glouster and enlisted in the U.S. Army on April 7, 1943, according to his obituary published by Jagers & Sons Funeral Home. The funeral home's notice states that through DNA identification efforts and the work of the U.S. Army, Myron would finally return home to his family after nearly 82 years overseas.
The loss of Myron Yaw was not the only wartime tragedy to strike his family. His older brother, Sgt. John Milton Yaw, was also a ball turret gunner, and he was killed in action on July 31, 1944, near Ploesti, Romania — just months before Myron's own plane went down over Poland, per the funeral home's account.
Services Held in Athens and Glouster
Calling hours were held from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 2, according to the Athens County Independent. Funeral services followed Saturday at 11 a.m. at Jagers & Sons Funeral Home in Athens, with military honors afterward at Maplewood Cemetery in Glouster, where Yaw was scheduled to be interred, the funeral home's obituary states.
Yaw's homecoming took eight decades to arrive.
Yaw's case was a long-delayed homecoming for a World War II servicemember.
