Arlington, Jul 10: The remains of six US airmen who disappeared during a Vietnam War combat mission were buried on Monday with full military honours in a single casket at Arlington National Cemetery.
The burial comes after the recovery of the remains in 2010 and 2011 by joint US-Laotian search teams.
The six service members had been missing since Christmas Eve 1965, when an Air Force plane nicknamed “Spooky” took off from Vietnam for a combat mission.
The crew sent out a “mayday” signal while flying over Laos, and after that, all contact was lost.
Two days of searches turned up nothing.
For years, that was all the families knew about what happened to the six servicemen aboard the plane.
The first joint US-Laotian team didn't visit the crash site until 1995 in the southern province of Savannahket, which was heavily bombed during the war as it lay on the Ho Chi Minh supply route that supplied Vietcong communist guerrillas in southern Vietnam.
A villager recalled seeing a two-propeller aircraft crash near the village. A second villager had found wreckage of it and took the team to the crash site.
Follow-up teams revisited the site four times between 1999 and 2001 and recovered military equipment but no human remains, and excavation was suspended.
Excavations resumed in 2010 and 2011, when human remains and personal items from the crew were found.
Examiners relied on dental records, personal items recovered from the site and circumstantial evidence to conclude that the recovered remains are representative of all six Air Force servicemen: Colonel Joseph Christiano of Rochester, N.Y.; Colonel Derrell B. Jeffords of Florence, S.C.; Lieutenant colonel Dennis L. Eilers of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Chief Master Sgt. William K. Colwell of Glen Cove, N.Y.; Chief Master Sgt. Arden K. Hassenger of Lebanon, Ore.; and Chief Master Sgt. Larry C. Thornton of Idaho Falls, Idaho.
It is not uncommon in situations like these for joint sets of remains to buried at Arlington.
The Pentagon's Defence POW/Missing Personnel Office lists more than 83-thousand service members as missing in action, the vast majority from World War II.
The burial comes after the recovery of the remains in 2010 and 2011 by joint US-Laotian search teams.
The six service members had been missing since Christmas Eve 1965, when an Air Force plane nicknamed “Spooky” took off from Vietnam for a combat mission.
The crew sent out a “mayday” signal while flying over Laos, and after that, all contact was lost.
Two days of searches turned up nothing.
For years, that was all the families knew about what happened to the six servicemen aboard the plane.
The first joint US-Laotian team didn't visit the crash site until 1995 in the southern province of Savannahket, which was heavily bombed during the war as it lay on the Ho Chi Minh supply route that supplied Vietcong communist guerrillas in southern Vietnam.
A villager recalled seeing a two-propeller aircraft crash near the village. A second villager had found wreckage of it and took the team to the crash site.
Follow-up teams revisited the site four times between 1999 and 2001 and recovered military equipment but no human remains, and excavation was suspended.
Excavations resumed in 2010 and 2011, when human remains and personal items from the crew were found.
Examiners relied on dental records, personal items recovered from the site and circumstantial evidence to conclude that the recovered remains are representative of all six Air Force servicemen: Colonel Joseph Christiano of Rochester, N.Y.; Colonel Derrell B. Jeffords of Florence, S.C.; Lieutenant colonel Dennis L. Eilers of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Chief Master Sgt. William K. Colwell of Glen Cove, N.Y.; Chief Master Sgt. Arden K. Hassenger of Lebanon, Ore.; and Chief Master Sgt. Larry C. Thornton of Idaho Falls, Idaho.
It is not uncommon in situations like these for joint sets of remains to buried at Arlington.
The Pentagon's Defence POW/Missing Personnel Office lists more than 83-thousand service members as missing in action, the vast majority from World War II.
