A Slickville airman whose body had been missing 80 years since his plane was shot down over Poland during World War II, will be returning home this summer, his family said.
The remains of Staff Sgt. Stephen J. “Johnny” Fatur that were recovered from the plane crash site near Breslau, Poland, were identified in July 2025 through DNA analysis and circumstantial evidence, according to the Defense Department POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
Fatur is to be buried with full military honors on Aug. 3, at his family’s plot at Twin Valley Memorial Park in Delmont, said Cheryl Lutz, a niece of Fatur’s who grew up in the Delmont area and now lives in Denver. For now, the Defense Department still is holding his remains, said Susan Vacha, funeral director at Bash-Nied-Jobe Funeral Home in Delmont, which is in charge of the arrangements.
Fatur was a 19-year-old tail gunner on a B17G Flying Fortress that was on a bombing mission over oil refineries in Germany on March 22, 1945, when it was shot down by German fighter planes, according to the Defense Department. The agency surmised that Fatur may have been wounded and unable to put on his parachute, which would have given him the opportunity to bail out of the plane before it crashed, Lutz said.
Reports from survivors of the plane crash indicate that the enemy fighters fired on the crew as they parachuted to the ground near Breslau. Fatur was among eight members of the 10-team crew who did not survive injuries sustained at some point. Two survivors were captured by German troops and later returned to U.S. custody, the Defense Department said.
He had been in military barely a year when his plane was shot down, Lutz said. The family had learned from the Defense Department that Fatur had volunteered for the bomber mission to allow another airman from the Delmont-Slickville area to go back home, Lutz said.
The Fatur family learned he was missing when they received a telegram from the government. Lutz’s mother, Helen, was just 12 when he was reported missing in the war, Lutz said.
“They (his parents- Helen and John Fatur) never got over their grief,” at losing their only son, Lutz said.
“Mom (Helen) knew her parents were consumed by their grief,” Lutz said.
Her grandmother, who ran a grocery store in Delmont with her grandfather, thought he would be coming home some day, Lutz said..
Missing, but not forgotten, because the airman’s mother “really kept his memory alive” with his photograph in the house, Lazur said.
Growing up in Slickville, Fatur was such an excellent ice skater that he auditioned for the Ice Capades and was offered a position with the touring skating troupe, but he opted for the military instead, Lutz said. That decision ultimately cost Fatur his life at age 19.
“He turned it down because he wanted to join the military and serve his country,” Lutz said.
In the decades since World War II, those of Stephen Fatur’s generation have passed, said Roy D. Fatur of Hempfield, one of Fatur’s cousins. Fatr was only abuot four years old when Stephen Fatur was declared missing and was too young to remember him.
Fatur and other members of the crew remained missing for decades, in part because of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union that followed the end of World War II.
The American Graves Registration Command searched for and disinterred the remains of U.S. servicemen in Europe, but investigations in the Soviet-occupied zone of Europe, including Poland, were severely limited, the POW/MIA Accounting Agency said. Possible human remains at the plane’s crash site were uncovered during excavations from 2019 to 2024 by the Defense Department’s POW/MIA Accounting Agency, in partnership with Alta Archaeological Consulting of Santa Rosa, Calif.
Fatur said that she, her sister and their mother provided DNA samples to the military about 10 years ago for identification purposes of possible human remains.
‘They (POW/MIA Accounting Agency) never give up. All over the world, they are looking for the missing soldiers.
“It’s all about the men and women who sacrificed. They need to come home,” Lutz said.