News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci
(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Remains Identified

Date: October 01, 1998

MEMORANDUM FOR CORRESPONDENTS No. 165-98
October 1, 1998

The remains of two American airmen previously unaccounted-for from the war in Southeast Asia have been identified and returned to the United States for burial.

The first set of remains is identified as those of Maj. Woodrow W. Parker II, U.S. Air Force, of St. Petersburg, Fla. The other set of remains is those of Parker's aircraft commander. At the wishes of the commander's family, the identity of these remains will not be released. Since the end of American participation in the war in 1973, the remains of 504 Americans have been recovered and identified; 2,079 remain unaccounted-for.

On April 24, 1968, Parker and his aircraft commander were on a combat mission over Quang Binh province, North Vietnam, when their F-4D Phantom crashed amid a large fireball. The flight leader was unable to establish radio contact. No parachutes were observed, nor was there an emergency signal detected. Hostile threats in the area precluded airborne or ground search and rescue operations. In April 1992, a joint U.S.-Vietnam team, led by the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, interviewed several local informants in a village near the location of the loss. Three informants turned over human remains and survival-related items that had been collected at the crash site years earlier. In July of 1992, a second joint U.S.-Vietnam team returned to the site and recovered aircraft wreckage and crew-related equipment.

A third joint team excavated the crash site during Aug.-Sept. 1993 and recovered aircraft wreckage, life support equipment and several skeletal fragments. Anthropological analysis of the remains and other evidence by the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii confirmed the identification of Parker and his aircraft commander.

The U.S. government welcomes and appreciates the cooperation of the government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam that resulted in the accounting of these servicemen. We hope that such cooperation will bring increased results in the future. Achieving the fullest possible accounting for these Americans is of the highest national priority.