Howard “Cliff” Enoch Jr. disappeared over what would become East Germany near the end of World War II, three months before his only son was born.
Six decades later, that son, Howard Enoch III, is getting to know his father while planning a funeral and memorial service for a man he never met.
The Department of Defense announced Wednesday it had identified the remains of 2nd Lt. Howard Clifton Enoch Jr. of Marion, Ky. His burial is scheduled for Sept. 22 at Arlington National Cemetery, and a memorial service is being planned for western Kentucky in October.
Lt. Enoch was a 20-year-old pilot of a P-51D Mustang, a long-range single-seat fighter aircraft, that was shot down near the village of Doberschutz, Germany, on March 19, 1945. Lt. Enoch’s remains were not immediately recovered, and the crash site fell behind Soviet lines when the war ended in May 1945.
