1st Lt. Dan Corson

U.S. Army Air Forces 1st Lt. Dan Winstead Corson, 27, of Middletown, was assigned to the 401st Bombardment Squadron, 91st Bombardment Group, Eighth Air Force. He was killed in action on Dec. 20, 1942 after the B-17F “Flying Fortress” he was co-piloting was struck by anti-aircraft fire during a bombing raid on a German aircraft factory at Romilly-sur-Seine, France.

Corson was accounted for the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) on Sept. 22, 2023 after his remains were exhumed in March 2019 from Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer, France, for laboratory analysis and identification, according to the military.

His remains were flown to Cincinnati Northern Kentucky International Airport on Friday night, and they were picked up by Mark Spaulding, president of Wilson-Schramm Spaulding Funeral Home in Middletown. A graveside service will start at 10 am. Wednesday in the white cross section of Woodside Cemetery, with full military honors and a 21-gun salute, Spaulding said. He called handling the arrangements of a WWII pilot “an absolute honor.”

A few years ago, a propeller blade on Corson’s B-17 was transferred from a WWII museum in France to the Middletown Historical Society, said Sam Ashworth, a local historian. Even before the Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor attacks, Corson, then a teller at Oglesby-Barnitz Bank in Middletown, enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. “He was carving out his career,” Ashworth said. Then his life was cut short on the morning of Dec. 20, 1942.

Dan's brother, who had also served, spent many years trying to find out what had happened to his brother. Over the years the task was passed down to other family members and was finally resolved when Dan's nephew, and namesake, got notified of the DNA match. These days Corson doesn’t have any relatives in the Middletown area. However, his nephew Dan and a few other family members will be in attendance for the services at Woodside Cemetery.