Missing Wiltshire WW2 airman found after 72 years

Flight Sergeant Kenneth Chapman was just 20-years-old when he disappeared Credit: ITV West Country

The family of a Wiltshire airman lost during WW2 are finally able to pay their respects at his grave.

Flight Sergeant Kenneth Chapman was an RAF Pathfinder, marking targets for British bombers.

In January 1944, the Lancaster bomber he was in disappeared without a trace, he and his fellow crewmen were reported missing and for 72 years were never traced.

His family were only able to speculate about what happened to him - for a while still hoping he might return home. But now documentary evidence has been used to identify his grave in a cemetery near Berlin.

Most of Kenneth Chapman's family died without finding out what happened to him.

But his nephew Kenneth Davies, and his cousin Gillian Hurn, responded to an appeal for relatives to come forward released by the Ministry of Defence.

They attended a rededication service in Berlin along with relatives of the other members of the crew.

An appeal by the MOD for relatives to come forward was successful Credit: ITV West Country
Kenneth Davies - Kenneth Chapman's nephew Credit: ITV West Country

Kenneth Davies grew up knowing very little about his Uncle - the man he was named after.

He knew he had an Uncle he'd never met and that he was an RAF Pathfinder lost over Germany.

Kenneth Chapman's cousin Gillian Hurn did meet him, she was there on the last day her family saw him. He used to visit her parents and was close to her older sister.

Gillian was 4 when she saw her cousin Kenneth Chapman for the last time Credit: ITV West Country

Hear their story: