News-Info-Alerts

Re: SEA and WW II MIAs Finally Laid to Rest

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: June 21, 2003

"The Pentagram
Missing veterans come to Arlington

by Dennis Ryan - Pentagram staff writer

Wednesday, 17 servicemen from two different wars were buried with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery in two separate services.

Nine Navy crewmembers, missing in action from the Vietnam era, were seen to their final resting-place in Section 60 by around 200 relatives and friends.

And, three Army pilots and five soldier passengers from a World War II B-25 mission finally were interred directly next to the sailors, a little over an hour later.

Pilots, Cmdr. Delbert Olson and Lt. j.g. Arthur Buck flew out of Nakhon Phanon Royal Thai Air Force Base on Jan. 11 1968 on an OP-2E for a mission over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. The crew of seven included: Lts. j.g. Denis Anderson and Philip Stevens, Seamen Richard Mancini, Gale Siow and Michael Roberts and Petty Officers Donald Thoresen and Kenneth Widon, and the crew's mascot dog, Snoopy.

Their was to drop acoustic or seismic sensors near possible enemy routes. A passing tank or truck would activate the sensors and the sensor would then send a signal to an airborne relay station, which would transfer it to a ground facility. Attacks could then be called in for the area.

The last report from Olsen and Buck indicated they were descending through dense clouds. That was the last time the crew was heard from. An Air Force plane photographed a suspected crash site on Jan. 25, 1968, but enemy activity prevented a recovery effort.

A joint U. S. and Laotian team investigated the crash site in 1993. It wasn't until the fourth joint expedition in 1996 found what turned out to be Buck and Olsen's wreckage in a remote and dangerous location.

Cilhi was not able to send in a recovery team until March of 2001. DNA analysis of dental and skeletal remains identify nine crew members. Some bone fragments could not be individually identified. Three fragments of bone were determined to be from Snoopy, the mascot.

Several of the crew had their remains buried in various places around the country. The remains that could not be individually identified were interred in the group burial Wednesday. The known remains of Snoopy were separated.

The war in the Pacific had just ended, when 1st Lt. Philip Miller set out from Australia on Sept. 8, 1945 in his Army Airways Communications System B-25 en route to what is now Biak, Indonesia.

Staff Sgt. Finn Buer , a passenger on the plane, had written to his family only two days before. He told his folks to get ready to have a big party when he returned. Finn would never make it home.

A helicopter pilot working for the Freeport Mining Corp. noticed aircraft wreckage on a mountaintop in Indonesia on Feb. 5, 1996. The company notified the military attache at the American Embassy in the Indonesian capitol of Jakarta.

A CILHI team recovered remains in 1999 from the site and the soldiers were identified in 2002 as crewmembers Sgt. Mathew Neary and Staff Sgt. Troy Hewett, Jr. and passengers; 1st Lt. Fred Smith, Staff Sgts. Veachel Straney, Charles Boslers and Earl Spredemann.

There were two caskets for the World War II men. Buer was buried in a separate casket next to his comrades.

The attendees for the second funeral were a mix of older siblings and widow, mixed with younger descendants two or three generations removed from the Pacific Theater of World War II.

© 1996-2003 Comprint Military Publications"