Department of Defense identifies remains of Californian pilot killed in World War II

Photos of Donald V. Banta, 21, of Los Angeles, whose plane was shot down over Germany on February 24, 1944. (DPAA)

A Los Angeles man who died serving his country during World War II will return home for burial after being successfully identified by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The remains of Tech Sgt. Donald V. Banta of the U.S. Army Air Force were positively identified and located last September. His surviving family members have just been officially notified of the matter.

Banta was assigned to the 703rd Bomber Wing, 445th Bomber Group, 8th Air Force in the European Theater, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), a U.S. Department of Defense agency tasked with recovering and identifying the remains of service members who were prisoners of war or missing in action in past military conflicts around the world.

Banta worked as an engineer and machine gunner on a B-24J “Liberator,” the DPAA said. He died on February 24, 1944, when his plane took off from an air base in England on a bombing run against enemy targets near Gotha, Germany, and was hit by anti-aircraft fire.

“During the operation, this aircraft was damaged by an attack from enemy fighter aircraft and exploded in mid-air near Leimbach, Germany,” officials said.

Banta was one of nine crew members on board when the plane crashed. Two managed to parachute out before being captured by German troops; the other seven, including Banta, died in the crash. He was 21 years old at the time.

The remains of one of his fellow crew members were recovered by German soldiers and buried in a local cemetery, but Banta’s remains and those of the other dead were never found, officials said.

But in 1952, years after the end of World War II, an American organization searching for and recovering the remains of fallen American soldiers in Europe received the unidentified “commingled” remains of several men buried in the Bad Salzungen cemetery in central Germany.

At the time, it was theorized that the men’s remains were related to Banta’s crashed plane, but it was impossible to positively identify them at the time.

Instead, their remains were buried at the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium.

Decades later, in June 2021, historians from DPAA and the American Battle Monuments Commission exhumed the remains of these men and sent them to a laboratory for identification.

Using modern scientific technology and analysis, scientists were able to confirm that one of the remains was Banta.

His name is currently recorded on the Tablets of the Missing at the Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery in Hombourg, Belgium. A rosette will now be placed next to his name to signify that he has finally been found and returned home.

Banta will now be buried at Riverside National Cemetery in Riverside. A date has not yet been set, but anyone seeking funeral or family information can contact the Army Casualty Office at 800-892-2490.

To learn more about Banta’s story, visit his biography page on the DPAA website.