Three years ago a biologist researching rats on a small Alaskan island stumbled across the wreckage of a Navy scout plane that took off from Kodiak in 1942 and never returned.

With seven crewmen aboard, including Robert Smith of Montana, the Navy's PBY Catalina fell under Japanese gunfire and tumbled toward the battle below. After a mid-air explosion, the heap of the aircraft crashed upon a dormant volcano on Kiska Island.

When Ian Jones, a biologist from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, searched the wreckage in 2002 while researching rats, he found more than he bargained for, including a human clavicle and the aircraft's serial plate.

Three years later, back in Montana, Smith's surviving relatives would greet the discovery with skepticism.

One day out of the blue, what's left of Smith's family received a telephone message from the Navy's casualty office. The message was unexpected and members of the family passed it off as a scam, never returning the call.

The message, left by Lt. Robert Sanchez, a member of the POW-MIA Section of the Casualty Division of the U.S. Navy, said the military had recovered and identified the remains of Robert Smith.

"I knew Robert had gone missing in action," said Mildred Tillo, one of Smith's cousins. "I knew how hard it was on his folks when he died. But it seems almost unbelievable that it took so many years to find that plane. He doesn't have any family left."

Tillo said she was young when Smith joined the Navy. She doesn't remember much about her affable Belgrade cousin. He was a nice man, she said, who spent time at their home in Helena. She remembers him starting a career in news radio at KFPA AM in Helena.

"You really don't think this is going to happen any more," said Baird Cross-McGorty, one of Smith's second cousins. "After 63 years, you just think they're gone and that's it."

The Catalina was introduced in 1933, meeting the U.S. Navy's need for a new flying boat with extended range. Few maritime battles took place during WWII in which the aircraft wasn't involved.

But the Catalina had its flaws. With a maximum airspeed of only 179 mph, the plane was considered slow. With no armor for the crew or self-sealing tanks, it was also vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire.

The Aleutian Island Campaign was in full swing off the Alaskan coast by June 1942. The campaign included the so-called Kiska Blitz -- the consistent bombing of Japanese targets occupying Kiska Harbor.

Warrant Officer Leland Davis and his co-pilot, Ensign Robert Keller, took off on a mission to attack Japanese ships in the harbor on June 14. The clouds hung low across the island that day and, as the plane came around for attack, it was met by heavy anti-aircraft fire.

The Catalina came apart in a "violent explosion," according to John Cloe, an author and historian. "Pieces of burning metal fluttered down on the hillside below." All seven men aboard the plane, including Smith, were listed as missing in action.

Smith's father learned of his son's disappearance through a Western Union telegram dated July 1, 1942.

"The Navy Department deeply regrets to inform you that your son, Arthur Smith ... is missing," the telegram began.

A year later, another message arrived by mail, signed by the Secretary of the Navy.

"After a full review of all available information, I am reluctantly forced to the conclusion that your son ... is deceased," the letter read.

In August 1943, two separate teams began searching for the crew and the missing plane. When the crash was located -- with the Alaskan winter closing in -- the team hatched a rapid recovery plan.

Major Rumi Nielson-Green, the public relations officer for the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii, said heavy snow during the first two recovery efforts likely precluded any attempts to bring the crew home.

"The Army team left the bodies at the site, presumably for the Navy's burial party," Nielson-Green said. "When the Navy went up, they recovered the remains and interred them near the crash site."

Ian Jones -- that biology professor from Newfoundland -- rediscovered the crash in 2002 while conducting research. The professor contacted JPAC and described what he'd found. Efforts to contact Jones for this story were unsuccessful.

But Nielson-Green said that by finding the serial plate at the crash site, along with the human bone, Jones helped JPAC corroborate evidence it already had on file.

It was enough, Nielson-Green said, to convince the Central Identification Lab to launch a new recovery party.

The team made its way north in 2003, arriving in Kiska just before the onset of fall. The team excavated the crash and the original burial site with all the care of Pompey.

"It may seem that the timeline is extraordinarily long," Nielson-Green said. "When digging in Alaska, the weather plays an obvious role. Also, if you have a group burial, you have the commingling of remains, and you have to sort out who's who if you can."

Nelson-Green estimated that around 80,000 U.S. service members are still missing in action or unaccounted for. Some may have disappeared on the battlefield while others vanished under more mysterious circumstances.

"We're charged with finding out what happened to them," Nielson-Green said. "We have investigative teams that go around the world to do that."

The teams are comprised of an anthropologist and several others, including specialists in mortuary affairs and forensic photography.

"We augment our missions with specialists as we need them," Nielson-Green said. "Everything is treated as evidence. They run it like an archeological dig. It's not unlike someone digging for a mummy in Egypt."

The recovery team went to work on Kiska, hunting for evidence that could link the site to a known human loss. The team made that connection between the Catalina wreckage and the 1942 disappearance of its crew.

"Every bucket of soil that comes out is screened," Nielson-Green said.

While Nielson-Green couldn't elaborate on what remains were found, the skeletal evidence, once exhumed, was taken to Hawaii where an odontologist charted dental work.

Other artifacts helped confirm Smith's identity, including flight buttons and military patches.

"Dental findings are still the number one way to identify an individual," Nielson-Green said. "Even in WWII they kept good dental records."

Dental charts aren't the only way to confirm one's identity, Nielson-Green said. Since mitochondrial DNA is passed down through generations and preserved within bone, it can also help make a match.

"Bone yields this sort of mtDNA pretty well, so we usually cut a sample and send it to the military's DNA lab in Maryland," Nielson-Green said. "We need to have a comparative sample drawn from a suitable family member. The two are compared and if found to be consistent, they can help make an ID conclusion."

Together, the mtDNA, the anthropological findings, the dental findings, the material evidence, and the investigative information help make a positive identification.

After studying each piece of evidence, the scientific director at JPAC renders a final determination on who the individual was. Once Smith was identified, as in all cases, a Navy casualty officer was charged with finding his next of kin.

That, however, didn't prove to be an easy task.

Lt. Robert Sanchez works with the POW-MIA Section of the Casualty Division of the U.S. Navy.

Shortly after Smith's remains were positively identified by the JPAC lab in Hawaii, Sanchez began searching for the family. Eight months would pass before his search paid off.

"Mr. Smith was one of seven members onboard that aircraft," Sanchez said. "He was the hardest to locate family for because of the commonality of his name."

Armed with Smith's original casualty report, which listed next of kin alive at that time, Sanchez began his search. As in many cases, his efforts turned to local newspapers and the Internet. Even that wasn't enough to crack the case.

"I've got four others who help conduct these searches who are retired and who practice genealogy as a hobby," Sanchez said. "The only reason I found Smith's family -- and it was looking like I wasn't going to find them -- is because one of those people pulled out a miracle."

Mildred Tillo said Smith's father passed away years ago. His mother, Mina, who lived past the age of 90, died in sadness having lost her only child.

Now, what Smith has left in the way of relatives amounts only to extended family. Still, when Smith is sent home, his cousins hope to inter him at Forestvale Cemetery next to his mother.

"He's got nobody in his original family left -- just a few of us cousins," said Tillo. "I was quite young, so I don't remember a whole lot about him."

Russell Cross, another cousin who knew Smith well, declined to be quoted for this story. And Baird Cross-McGorty, that second cousin, never really knew Smith.

"I've done so much genealogy that I feel very close to his family. Bringing Robert home is something we need to do for his mother, Mina," she said.