BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — Arthur Monroe Lingo has finally come home. The World War II pilot, killed in action in 1944, is now at rest at National Cemetery in Arvin.
It took eight decades and the work of dozens of people, including Germans living near the town of Miesterhorst, in central Germany. Captain Lingo, just days shy of his 25th birthday, had been flying a bomber escort mission over the town of Sorau, when on April 11, 1944, he was brought down by enemy aircraft. The Taft High School graduate crashed in marshy swampland and left virtually no useful evidence.
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After the war, authorities, historians and others gradually brought pieces of his plane to the surface, including the P-51 Mustang’s engine and a section bearing a part of his tail number. His remains were eventually discovered and Lingo was officially reclassified from MIA to “accounted for” on Jan. 10, 2025.
On Thursday, family members — too young to have known the all-American boy from the tiny oil town of Fellows — gathered to bury him at the National Cemetery near Arvin…