Vernal John Bird was the 12th of 13 children born to Walter F. and Christina Pearson Ash Bird. He attended schools in Lindon and Pleasant Grove, UT. He was the student body president at Pleasant Grove High School before the family moved to Springville,UT.

Vernal enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces on 25 April 1941 in Salt Lake City, UT and received his Pilot Badge in October 1942. By 12 March 1944, he was a Second Lieutenant serving as a pilot with the 13th Bomber Squadron, 3rd Bomber Group (Light), 5th Air Force.

On that day, 25-year-old 2LT Vernal J. Bird and his co-pilot, Staff Sgt. Roy F. Davis, were flying a A-20G Havoc bomber on a mission to bomb Japanese airfields in western New Guinea. The mission had been completed and was returning to the American base at Nadzab, Papua New Guinea, located next to Lae, where Amelia Earhart began her ill-fated flight in 1937. Their bomber disappeared near Papua New Guinea and they were listed as Missing in Action.

Vernal, in the last letter written to his family, two days before his bomber went missing on 12 March 1944, described how he flew his light bomber barely above tree-top level, saying "we fly right in the leaves at times."

The crash site of the A-20G Havoc bomber flown by Bird and Davis was finally discovered in 2001 by a Papuan national, Charles Wintawa, who delivered the single leg bone (fibula) he found, along with engine identification plates of the bomber, to an American recovery team. However, it wasn't until July 2013 that the U.S. Air Force was able to identify the fibula as belonging to Bird. The remains of Staff Sgt. Roy Davis from New Hampshire, have still not been found. The Air Force is forced to move cautiously in a full excavation of the crash site due to a 500-pound unexploded bomb that is still attached to the A-20G Havoc bomber.

Burial

Over 69 years after he and his plane went Missing in Action, the remains of Second Lieutenant Vernal John Bird were finally buried, with full military honors, on Saturday, 28 September 2013, at Evergreen Cemetery in Springville, UT.

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