News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Answers After 30 Years

Date: July 13, 2001

"Three decades later, Kansas family hopes to see lost Vietnam pilot buried
By GRACE HOBSON - The Kansas City Star

David Olson of Prairie Village has spent most of his 40 years knowing that his father lay dead on a mountainside in Laos.

Only in the past few years has he learned what the Naval pilot was doing when his OP-2E aircraft crashed in January 1968.

It was only this week that he witnessed his father's remains -- or what thinks are his father's remains -- touch American soil.

After Olson and his father's former squadron buddies launched a fierce campaign, the U.S. military risked a dangerous mission in March to recover the remains of Navy Cmdr. Delbert Olson and his eight crew members.

A repatriation ceremony Tuesday at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii brought Olson a step closer to the ultimate goal of a proper military burial for the crew at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington.

"They've been together for 33 years," Olson said. "I want to see them come to rest in Arlington together."


Final mission
David Olson was 7 when his father last hugged him goodbye. The Navy officer headed off to Thailand and the secret Observation Squadron 67, known as VO-67.

The squadron's mission was to drop electronic sensors along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a North Vietnamese supply route through Laos. The sensors could pick up sound and vibrations from truck movements, providing key reconnaissance.

But the drops were risky. The aircraft were heavy and slow, and they were required to fly at 500 feet, exposing them to enemy fire.

A former VO-67 member recalled being told that the squadron would lose 60 percent to 75 percent of its crews, according to a history of the squadron.

David Olson's sister, Dana Snyder, who lives in Overland Park, remembers talking with her father for the last time. He called his children shortly before Christmas 1967.

"He was subdued," Dana Snyder said. "He knew his mission, that he had a 50 percent chance of making it back alive. He chose all single crew members except his co-pilot. It was sobering."

Radio contact with Olson's plane was lost at 9:57 a.m. Jan. 11, 1968.

Within weeks, an Air Force plane found the suspected crash site and determined that the plane crashed 150 feet from the top of a 4,583-foot mountain in Laos.

Pictures from the search mission revealed the crew's canine mascot, Snoopy, lying with a crew member.

There were no indications of survivors, and enemy fire was heavy in the area, so no further search and rescue was conducted.


Recovery campaign
While the Olson family got regular communications from the Navy and learned early on that the plane had gone down in Laos, information was scarce until 1996.

David Olson, an engineer who represents aerospace industry manufacturers, got so frustrated that he began taking steps to run his own recovery mission.

His aerospace contacts offered help; he knew a helicopter pilot and someone with contacts in Laos.

"I had daughters who at the time were the same ages my sister and I were when my dad went missing," Olson said. "I thought, the only thing I need is to go there and get missing myself."

And then suddenly, a development.

The Joint Task Force -- Full Accounting, which provides an accounting for missing personnel, sent in a crew to find and investigate the site.

Rappelling down a sheer cliff, the crew found the site and recovered remains of two crew members, but not those of Olson. The crew did, however, bring back one of his dog tags.

But the area is thick with vipers, the monsoon-prone weather is hostile to helicopters, and the site is difficult to reach.

The military decided against further recovery missions.

Then in 1998, another break. The records of the mission were declassified. For the first time, squadron members were able to begin contacting each other.

At the first reunion in 1999, a group of men walked David Olson's way as he stood in line to check in at the hotel. One man's eyes met his.

"When he was 10 feet away, his eyes filled up with tears and he said, `You're Commander Olson's son, aren't you?' " Olson recalled.

Through such reunions and Web sites, the men gathered their VO-67 family back together. Then they began their mission to get their lost members back as well.

A letter-writing and lobbying campaign ensued.

By March, a team from the Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii was in Laos.

The 13-member team, including 10 Americans, spent three weeks carefully excavating the site and documenting their finds. More than half the remains at the site were recovered, along with the second of Olson's dog tags, said team anthropologist David Rankin.

The remains now will be identified in a process that could take six to nine months, said Col. David Pagano, commander of the Central Identification Laboratory.

The lab expects to send in a crew next year to recover the rest of the remains, Pagano said.

The recovery missions worry Dana Snyder, who fears more deaths, especially since the loss of a 16-member recovery team in Vietnam in April.

David Olson wishes the whole process had taken place long, long ago.

The mission to bring the crew home was fueled by a pact the crew members made: If a plane goes down, get the men home.

"I'm very proud of David for what he has done," said his mother, Patricia Fohey of Leawood.

"And his father would be, too."

@tag1:To reach reporter Grace Hobson, call (816) 234-7744 or send e-mail to ghobson@kcstar.com. "