The remains of Maj. Charles L. Bifolchi, of Quincy, Mass., were identified by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which is headquartered at Hickam Air Force Base.

The command assisted in the recovery and identification of Bifolchi's remains, which have been returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

On Jan. 8, 1968, Bifolchi and a fellow crew member were flying an armed reconnaissance mission against enemy targets in Kon Tum Province, South Vietnam, when their RF-4C aircraft disappeared. A U.S. Army helicopter crew found their aircraft wreckage soon after first light the next day. Search efforts continued for four days; however, enemy activity in the area, combined with the steep terrain and high winds at the crash site, precluded the recovery of the crewmen.

Between 1993 and 2000, U.S. and Socialist Republic of Vietnam teams led by the Hickam ID lab conducted two surveys of an area that was believed to be Bifolchi's crash site.

One team interviewed two Vietnamese citizens who turned over human remains they claimed to have recovered at the site. Another team found wreckage consistent with Bifolchi's aircraft.

In June, a mitochondrial DNA sample from Bifolchi's late aunt was matched to the airman's left thigh bone — all that was recovered from the jungle, the family told The Boston Globe this week. The thigh bone will be buried tomorrow, on what would have been Bifolchi's 63rd birthday, the family told the newspaper.

"It's a feeling of relief that it's over now; it's a feeling of closure," George Bifolchi, 66, the brother of the downed navigator, told the Globe. "This is a shock. I didn't think they were going to find anything."

In the years following the war, thousands of Americans wore memorial bracelets that were stamped with the names of missing servicemen. Bifolchi's was on the bracelet worn for 20 years by former Quincy police Lt. Thomas Bolinder, according to The Patriot Ledger.