News-Info-Alerts

Re: Hunt for Gulf War Pilot

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: March 21, 2003

"Faith persists in hunt for Gulf War POW as U.S. revisits Iraq

Pensacola pilot recalls '91 night his peer was lost

Kimberly Blair
@PensacolaNewsJournal.com

Bob Stumpf closely watches as events unfold in Iraq, and he prays that today's war will help resolve a haunting question: What is the fate of Navy pilot Lt. Cmdr. Michael Scott Speicher?

"I've been thinking a lot about Scott," said Stumpf, 50, of Pensacola, a retired Navy captain and former Blue Angels flight commander.


"We were flying together the night he was shot down. I saw it peripherally," he said. "I'm strongly convinced his case is part of the war plan. Hopefully, we will know something in the very short future."


Pentagon officials have said U.S. troops will search for Speicher as they undertake the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime.


U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Chumuckla, said Friday that based on what he knows, he feels confident there is a Pentagon plan to look for Speicher.


"I would certainly expect the Department of Defense to full well be using the intelligence they have gathered in trying to locate him. We are all hopeful he is alive," said Miller, a member of the House Armed Services Committee.


Speicher initially was declared dead, even though no search and rescue mission was launched. Since then, evidence to indicate otherwise has surfaced, and his status was changed to missing in action. He might be alive today and could be a prisoner of war.


Speicher's fate is a big issue in the military aviation community, Stumpf said.


"It is something we all take for granted," he said. "We expect that if we go down, that all the might of the U.S. military will look for us. We offer our lives, and in return they do everything in their power to get us back.


Fateful night


Stumpf, Speicher and eight other squadron members climbed into their F/A-18 Hornets and roared off the carrier USS Saratoga in the wee hours of Jan. 16, 1991. They were flying the first air mission of the Gulf War.


Originally, Speicher was not supposed to go. His commander tapped him as a spare to take over if any of the other pilots could not complete their missions.


"He went to his commanding officer and asked to be put on schedule as a primary fighter," Stumpf said. "That was not unusual. It was kind of an unstated honor to be selected for the very first mission."


Generally, only the senior leaders were selected for the first mission. Stumpf surmises that Speicher, considered one of the best fighter pilots aboard, was not pleased about being asked to wait in the wings.


"That says a lot about his character, that he would go face what he faced instead of sitting in a ship as a spare," Stumpf said.


Their mission that night was to take out Iraqi radar, command and control centers and surface-to-air missile sites. The dangerous attacks hinged on split-second timing.


Shortly after entering Iraq, the pilots quickly came into a barrage of anti-artillery fire.


As Stumpf zoomed at 690 mph toward his target on the outskirts of Baghdad, he caught a glimpse of a bright flash. Later, he learned the flash was Speicher's plane exploding.


"We were all simultaneously working toward the launch point. We had all lined up in a big wall and were maybe five miles apart from each other.


"As we approached the missile launch site, I saw the large flash. So much was going on. There were so many bursts and missiles. Although it was bright and noticeable, it was a busy time, and I didn't have time to try to figure it out. I had to avoid getting hit and get to the launch point."


When he thought back, he realized the flash was Speicher's plane.


Stumpf did not learn about Speicher's fate until he returned to the ship. That is the only time he was asked officially what he he saw. And it was just a shipboard briefing geared to pinpoint where Speicher's plane might have crashed.


Later, Stumpf learned the Pentagon had satellite images depicting the outline of a crashed jet on the desert floor at the exact location that he and the other pilots had pinpointed.


Even with this information, no search and rescue was ever launched.


"You can imagine, we were very disappointed," he said.


Declared missing


As Stumpf went on to fly with the Blue Angels, Speicher was never far from his thoughts.


Over the years, he has been interviewed about the case by numerous news agencies, including "60 Minutes II."


After the "60 Minutes II" report in 2000, the Navy took the extraordinary step of changing Speicher's status to missing in action.


The broadcast highlighted evidence that the pilot still might be alive and that he is believed to be a POW - the only American remaining unaccounted for from the Gulf War.


The report revealed evidence that he might have ejected safely and, according to an Iraqi defector, was driven from the desert to Baghdad. That defector even picked Speicher out of a photo lineup.


Last year, as the probability of another war with Iraq grew clearer, Speicher's status was changed to "missing-captured," a move that opened the door for the current search.


"This should serve as a lesson learned. We need to make sure it doesn't happen again," Stumpf said. "We made a collective huge deal in not following up on Speicher back then. It was not done maliciously. It just got mired down in bureaucracy."


A family's faith


Over the years, Stumpf has remained in touch with Speicher's family members in Jacksonville, who have spearheaded aggressive efforts to resolve his case. He said Speicher's family is privy to the plans to bring him home and their resolve gives him reasons to believe it's plausible.


"I think it is a credible theory because I don't see any reasons why Saddam would put him to death," Stumpf said. "It would be contrary to Saddam's history. He tends to keep prisoners alive. He has prisoners from the Iran- Iraq war of the early 1980s."


If anyone could survive the harsh Iraqi prisons all these years, Stumpf is convinced Speicher could.


"He is a really strong person, an intelligent person and a faithful person," said Stumpf, who notably speaks of his friend in the present tense. "I would question the psychological impact of his incarceration all these years."


With the mission under way, neither Speicher's family, their lawyer nor the Navy will discuss the case.


Lt. Cmdr. Paula Storum, a Navy spokeswoman in Washington, said "the Speicher case is always a priority for the Navy and its leadership."


As reports of the first U.S. fatalities of this new war with Iraq come back, Stumpf, now a pilot for Federal Express, is sensitive about how the casualties of war impact the morale of squadrons and military units.


"It was very discouraging to lose a pilot," he said. "We lost a couple of more pilots during that first week. It was not a good time. It was not a good first week."


He's hopeful that all measures will be taken to search for pilots shot down this time.


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