Tragedy becomes farce as RAF hero’s remains turn out to be... animal bones
HE DIED a hero in a foreign field, shot down in the skies over wartorn Korea more than 60 years ago, but with nothing to mark his grave.
So when the North Korean dictatorship agreed to give up the remains of decorated RAF fighter pilot Flight Lieutenant Desmond Hinton, it looked as if he was heading home at last.
Desmond’s brother David had spent years trying to persuade Pyongyang to hand over the remains for proper burial after locating a grave site near the capital in 2004.
In 2011, a casket was passed with great ceremony to the then British ambassador to North Korea.
But what the world was never told was that subsequent DNA tests on the bones identified them not as Flt Lieut Hinton’s but those of an animal. While family members were informed, the media was kept in the dark for fear of damaging relations between North Korea and the UK.
The revelation appears in the memoirs of Thae Yong-Ho, a North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea i n 2016. It came as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un agreed with US President Donald Trump at their Singapore summit that all remains of US servicemen who died in the Korean War would now be returned.
The defector puts the Hinton episode down to incompetence. He recalls how Britain protested but North Korean officials complained they lacked equipment to distinguish animal from human bones.
Flt Lieut Hinton, who had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in the Second World War, was on secondment to the US Air Force when his F- 86 Sabre was shot down in January 1952.
The 29-year-old, from New Malden in Surrey, baled out, but his colleagues could not see his para- chute against the snow- covered ground. It was hoped Flt Lieut Hinton had been taken prisoner but he died of injuries sustained.
He left behind a widow and two small children.
Flt Lieut Hinton’s nephew, Max Stevens, said: ‘This caper of presenting animal bones instead of Desmond’s remains is the North Koreans all over. His brother David went to such lengths to bring home his body yet the North Koreans tried to fool him. That was shameful.’