News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Vietnam POW-MIA Laid to Rest

Date: September 19, 2001

"MIA airman returns home, buried with honors

09/19/01 - COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., (AFPN) -- The remains of Maj. Victor Apodaca were laid to rest Sept. 15 with full military honors at the U.S. Air Force Academy here.

The formerly missing-in-action serviceman's remains arrived at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., on Sept 13 aboard a Minnesota Air National Guard C-130 Hercules. People from the 21st Logistics Support Squadron delivered the remains to Apodaca's awaiting family.

Apodaca, an F-4C Phantom pilot, and Capt. Jon T. Busch died while serving during the Vietnam War.

The two airmen received enemy fire and were shot down on June 8, 1967 while flying an armed reconnaissance mission over the Quang Binh province in North Vietnam.

Other U.S. aircrews in the area reported receiving a radio transmission from Apodaca that he had lost use of the hydraulic system on his aircraft. Soon after, a weak emergency beeper signal was heard, but no aircrew saw where the plane might have crashed. Rescue aircraft were dispatched, but the aircrews were unable to locate the fighter's crash site.

Apodaca's family has waited more than 34 years for closure in the serviceman's death. The process began in July of 1988, when the Socialist Republic of Vietnam returned to the United States 25 boxes of remains believed to be those of missing American servicemen. Among those were remains associated with Apodaca and Busch, as well as an identification tag for Apodaca, From those remains, Busch was later identified but not Apodaca.

Later that year, a joint U.S. Vietnamese team led by the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting interviewed residents of the Quang Binh province who described a 1967 crash which appeared to correlate to the loss of Apodaca and Busch.

One of the witnesses said he had turned over some of the remains and an identification tag to local authorities earlier that year. The identification tag was included in the remains repatriated in July 1988. The joint team traveled to the suspected crash site, but was unable to confirm its exact location.

In April 1989, the Vietnamese turned over another 21 boxes of remains and their records indicated that Apodaca's was among them. Another joint team in 1991 examined documents in Quang Binh province that added more detail about the crash, as well as burial information on the two crewmembers.

Over the next 10 years, search teams investigated leads while scientists at the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii worked with the remains that had been turned over by the Vietnamese. In 1999, scientists completed a forensic analysis of the remains that were turned over by the Vietnamese in 1989, and confirmed Apodaca's identification through the use of mitochondrial DNA.

"Achieving the fullest possible accounting of Americans missing in action is of the highest national priority," said Alan Liotta, acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW/missing personnel affairs. "The support we received from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam enabled us to identify this serviceman, and we look forward to continued cooperation."

Apodaca is a 1961 academy graduate and native of Englewood, Colo. His sons, Victor and Robert, attended their father's funeral."