Military identifying Vietnam chopper crash victims
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
A team from Hawai'i was en route to Vietnam last night in the aftermath of a helicopter crash Saturday that killed seven American servicemen and nine Vietnamese south of Hanoi.
As of late last night military authorities had not released the names of those killed.
"The names will not be released until positive identification has been completed,'' Lt. Col. Christy M. Samuels of the U.S. Pacific Command at Camp H.M. Smith in 'Aiea said yesterday.
Military staffers worked throughout the day to make sure that family members of the personnel thought to have been aboard the helicopter had been notified, and that, in Vietnam, the remains of the 16 people who had been aboard the Russian-made MI-17 were moved to a hospital in Hanoi.
"In Hanoi, as we speak, they are working toward positive identification of the personnel," Samuels said yesterday afternoon.
She said the U.S. service members lost in the crash were all men.
The team aboard the helicopter was supporting an effort to recover and repatriate remains of missing American service members from the war in Southeast Asia, a project known as Joint Task Force-Full Accounting.
The task force has headquarters at Camp H.M. Smith and has detachments in Hanoi, Bangkok and Vientiane, Laos.
Archaeologists, anthropologists and other forensic specialists are provided to the task force by the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawai'i.
Air Force Maj. Rene Stockwell, deputy public affairs officer for the joint task force, said yesterday that the bodies of the downed servicemen could arrive at Hickam Air Force Base as early as the end of this week.
Task force members from Hanoi were at the site of the crash within hours, and task force personnel assigned to recovery efforts in Laos were reassigned to Vietnam to help with the recovery of their downed co-workers, she said. Two members of the 15-member Laos team were anthropologists from the Central Identification Laboratory in Hawai'i.
Team doing advance work
An 11-member task force team from Hawai'i was en route to Vietnam yesterday evening, she said.
Stockwell said later yesterday evening that the bodies of the crew members had been identified but the names were being withheld while military authorities worked to contact relatives of the servicemen. Persons worried that their loved ones might have been aboard the helicopter should call the appropriate casualty office, she said.
The Air Force casualty office can be reached at 1-800-531-5501; the Army at 1-800-892-2490; the Navy at 1-800- 443-9298 and the Marine Corps at 1-800-847-1597.
The team that crashed was doing advance work for the 65th Joint Field Activity mission in Vietnam, coordinating with local authorities, seeing that living quarters would be available for the investigators who were to follow and that proper equipment would be available to investigate six sites. The 65th Joint Field Activity was scheduled to leave from Hickam Air Force Base for Vietnam at the beginning of next month.
The advance team flew out of Vinh, Vietnam, and were to arrive before dark Saturday at the Phu Bai airfield, Stockwell said. When they did not arrive a search was initiated.
The crashed helicopter was found about three miles off Vietnam's Highway 1, in jungle terrain near Thanh village, Bo Trach district, Quang Binh province. The helicopter was believed to have crashed about 3:30 Saturday, Vietnam time, which would have been 10:30 p.m. Friday, Hawai'i time, she said.
Sky was hazy
The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
Army Lt. Col. Franklin Childress, public affairs officer for the task force, said Saturday that the Joint Field Activity team scheduled to leave in late April or early May will consist of 95 task force members. As of late yesterday, that trip had not been canceled.
In Washington, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld yesterday expressed his regrets and paid homage to the joint Vietnamese-American team a few hours after the crash.
"Those of us in the Department of Defense, and the families of our missing, are keenly aware of the dedication of both the American and Vietnamese team members who were, on this very day, searching for servicemen who have been missing in action since the end of the war," he said. "Led by the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting and the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory, Hawai'i, this recovery work is truly a noble calling."
The crash represents the first loss of life in 65 missions into Vietnam's difficult and at times dangerous terrain, he said.
Witnesses said Saturday that skies were hazy when the helicopter carrying the team crashed near Thanh Tranh village in the province of Quang Binh, about 280 miles south of Hanoi.
Chopper owned by Vietnam
Villagers reported seeing the helicopter swinging wildly in the air before plummeting into a mountainside.
Authorities found burned bodies at the site, and one man who later died lived long enough to tell them the plane was carrying an MIA search team.
Quang Binh province in central Vietnam was the southernmost province of North Vietnam during the war, just north of the former demilitarized zone. It was heavily bombed and contains many military crash sites.
The MI-17 helicopter was owned by Vietnam and flown by a Vietnamese pilot. Task force officials said the plane has always been considered safe and reliable.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
