U.S. Army Air Corps Staff Sgt. Claude "Bud" Ray was among 12 crewmen aboard a B-24 bomber that disappeared during World War II while on a reconnaissance mission in New Guinea in 1943. The crash site was discovered about 60 years later and Ray's remains will be returned to his nephew, Fallbrook resident Burt Risser, on Monday. (Courtesy photo)

Fallbrook's Burt Risser remembers his family's shock and grief when the telegram came to its door in Coffeyville, Kan., 67 years ago with the news his uncle had been declared missing in action during the World War II battle with the Japanese for the South Pacific island of New Guinea.

The message said U.S. Army Air Corps Staff Sgt. Claude "Bud" Ray and 11 fellow crewmen aboard a B-24 bomber had disappeared while on a reconnaissance mission.

"It was enormous grief because we had gotten letters earlier that month saying he had completed all his required missions and would be home soon," Risser recalled Thursday. "He wrote he was dreaming of a white Christmas in Kansas."

On Monday, Risser is scheduled to meet a Hawaiian Airlines plane at San Diego International Airport that is carrying his uncle's skeletal remains, identified earlier this year after the wreckage of the bomber was discovered near a mountaintop decades after the war.

On Wednesday, Risser, his uncle's closest living relative, and other family members will bury Ray at Riverside National Cemetery exactly 67 years from the day his plane vanished.

Five months ago, an Army casualty assistance officer notified Risser and his sister Karen Gideon that DNA samples taken from family members matched some of the remains recovered after a New Guinea villager stumbled across the wreckage in 2003.

It wasn't until 2007 that a military recovery team was able to comb the wreckage and confirm it was the missing B-24 from the storied "Jolly Rogers" 90th Bomb Group.

All the remains were removed and taken to Hawaii, where the DNA analysis took place and confirmed that Ray had been found.

"After all these years of wondering what happened to him and knowing how much my mother and his mother and father suffered and died without ever having any closure on his disappearance," Risser said. "It's a prayer answered all these many years later to know that he is finally coming home to the country he died for."

Ray was a tail gunner who had earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal and Oak Leaf Clusters. He was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart.

His final combat flight was one he didn't have to take. He and his crew were scheduled to return home, having completed their required number of missions and been replaced with a fresh crew.

"But the replacement crew needed a tail gunner, and they asked Bud if he would volunteer for one last flight," Risser said the family was later told. "His crew tried to talk him out of it, but my uncle said 'no,' they've been trained and it will be all right."

Ray was said to have joked to an officer from his original crew that while he wouldn't achieve the officer's rank, he would go home with more combat hours under his belt by taking that final flight.

On Oct. 27, 1943, the plane took off from Port Moresby, New Guinea for the recon flight to Rabual in Papua, New Guinea. It soon encountered severe weather and the pilot was instructed to land at the closest possible base.

Nothing more was ever heard from the crew members. Repeated searches failed to find any trace of the aircraft in the heavily canopied jungles where it disappeared.

Ray had survived other close calls, including his plane being chased by several Japanese fighters after a bombing run. He is credited with shooting down two of the enemy fighters, Risser said.

Ray, Claude A., S/Sgt