“German Fighter Pilot Identified After 79 Years from DNA on Envelope”, 2022-07-15 (; backlinks):
An archive search and some DNA found in the glue of an old envelope have helped identify a German fighter pilot whose plane crashed in aerial combat over Friesland in 1943.
Unteroffizier Konstantin Benzien was the only pilot whose identity was still unknown 79 years after the fighting that broke out when the Luftwaffe intercepted an American bombing mission over the north-western province.
…The researchers managed to track down a sister of Benzien’s in the United States but found she had died. However, her grandchildren, whose DNA would not have helped identify the pilot, turned out to have held on to a number of letters sent during their grandmother’s lifetime.
‘A forensic investigation found her DNA in the glue under the stamps and the sealing glue and it matched the DNA taken from her brother’s bones’, Tuinhuis said.