On April 25, 2007, the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO, now DPAA) identified the remains of Sergeant Charles L. Spiegel, missing from World War II.



Sergeant Spiegel entered the U.S. Army Air Forces from Illinois and served in the 644th Bombardment Squadron, 410 Bombardment Group (Light). On December 12, 1944, he was a gunner aboard an A-20J Havoc (serial number 43-21720) when it took off from Coullomiers, France, for a bombing mission against enemy positions in Wollseifen, Germany. The Havoc was last seen in a snowstorm, out of control and in a steep dive near Schleiden, approximately thirty-three miles southwest of Cologne, Germany. In 1975, a private German company clearing unexploded ordnance from the war found a gravesite northeast of Simmerath. The remains of the three crew members from this Havoc were recovered there, but could not be individually identified and were buried as unknowns in the Ardennes American Cemetery in Neupré, Belgium. In 2003, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command received information related to the missing crew of the Havoc from a group of German citizens. This information prompted the disinterment of the remains recovered from the crash site in 1975. These remains were brought to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory where scientists used dental records, forensic identification tools, and circumstantial evidence to identify SGT Spiegel.



Sergeant Spiegel is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Lorraine American Cemetery in Saint-Avold, France.