"He was a badass fighter in the sky."

The headstone at Belgium’s Ardennes American Cemetery for U.S. soldiers who died in World War II read: “Rest in honor and glory.” But it featured no name.

The U.S. military had identified the man only as “Unknown, X-632″ when he was buried. For more than seven decades, no one knew who was in that grave.

Then, starting in 2012, a team of German researchers began an effort to identify missing Americans, wanting to honor those who helped defeat the Nazis and bring democracy to their nation. And they uncovered the story behind the unnamed soldier.

The soldier was exhumed, flown to the United States, and buried with full honors in Arlington National Cemetery on Sept. 13.

There, a new headstone has a name: Newell Franklin Mills Jr. He was from St. Petersburg, an Army Air Forces pilot who went missing when his plane was shot down by Nazi fighters.

Read more at the Tampa Bay Times