Irwin Stuart Lerner from Stratford, Connecticut.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: December 20, 1972
Death details: On September 29, 2003, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Major Irwin Stuart Lerner, missing from the Vietnam War.
Major Lerner joined the U.S. Air Force from New York and was a member of the 346th Bombardment Squadron. On December 20, 1972, he was the electronic warfare officer aboard a B-52D Stratofortress on a bombing mission against enemy targets in Hanoi, Vietnam. The B-52D was shot down by a surface-to-air missile during the mission, and Maj Lerner was killed in the resulting crash. Enemy control of the area prevented search efforts for those lost in the incident. After the war, joint U.S. and Vietnamese search teams investigated the B-52D’s crash site. In 1986, Vietnamese officials turned over a set of remains that had been recovered from the site to U.S. custody. Advances in forensic techniques eventually allowed for the remains to be identified as those of Maj Lerner.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency