LORAIN, Ohio — A World War II veteran's remains are returning home.
Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Steve Nagy was a member of the 407th Bombardment Squadron (Heavy,) 92nd Bombardment Group (Heavy,) 40th Combat Bombardment Wing, 1st Air Division, 8th Air Force.
He was piloting a B-17G Flying Fortress aircraft, carrying nine crew members, on Aug. 24, 1944, when it was struck by German anti-aircraft fire and crashed during a bombing raid over Merseburg, Germany, according to the Army.
Four crew members survived and were captured by German forces. Nagy and the other four were killed.
He was just 23 years old.
His remains were reported to have been buried in the Leipzig-Lindenthal Cemetery, according to the Army.
After the war, three sets of remains were recovered from the Lindenthal Cemetery, two of which could not be identified and were subsequently designated Unknown X-1047 and X-183.
In 1947, it was determined that X-1047 contained the remains of two separate individuals, according to the Army.
They were segregated and redesignated as X-1047A and X-1047B, and the three sets were buried as unknown American service members in American Battle Monuments Commission cemeteries in Europe.
In 2017, a historian with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency determined that X-1047A, X-1047B and X-183 could likely be associated with crewmembers from Nagy’s B-17G Flying Fortress.
The remains were disinterred and sent to the agency's laboratory in April 2019 for analysis.
Nagy was accounted for by the agency on Sept. 3, 2019, after his remains were identified using dental, anthropological and Y chromosome DNA analysis.
His remains will return to Lorain later this month.
A funeral for Nagy will be held on Sept. 24 at Gluvna-Shimo-Hromada Funeral Home. He will then be buried at Elmwood Cemetery.
