Air Force Officer MIA from Vietnam War is Identified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.

He is Col. Eugene D. Hamilton of Opelika, Ala. Final arrangements for his funeral have not been set.

On Jan. 31, 1966, Hamilton was flying an armed reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam when his F-105D ‘Thunderchief’ was hit by enemy ground fire over Ha Tinh province. His mission was part of a larger operation, known as Operation Rolling Thunder, which attacked air defense systems and the flow of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Airborne searches for his crash site that day were unsuccessful. A radio broadcast from Hanoi reported an F-105 had been shot down but did not provide any details.

Between July 1993 and November 2000, joint U.S.-Vietnam teams, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), conducted four investigations and one excavation searching for the pilot and his plane.

An investigation team in March 2000 learned from a Vietnamese villager that an area excavated in 1997 was not the location of the pilot’s burial. A second location was then excavated in August and September 2000, which did yield aircraft wreckage, personal effects and human remains.

In 2004, three Vietnamese citizens turned over to a JPAC team remains they had found at the same crash site a year earlier.

In late May 2005, the JPAC team recovered fragments of possible human remains and life support equipment from the 2000 crash site. Personal effects found there also included a leather nametag with the name “HAMILTON” partially visible on it.

JPAC scientists and Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory specialists used mitochondrial DNA as one of the forensic tools to help identify the remains. Laboratory analysis of dental remains also confirmed his identity.

Of those Americans unaccounted-for from all conflicts, 1,807 are from the Vietnam War, with 1,382 of those within the country of Vietnam. Another 839 Americans have been accounted-for in Southeast Asia since the end of the war, with 599 from Vietnam.

For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO website at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.

Here are some details of the operation in which this officer was lost. It was a very heavy series of raids done for political impact, unfortunately:

Ending The Christmas 1965 Bombing Halt
What follows is a detailed mission account of the resumption of bombing after the 1965 Christmas halt. The mission, flown on 31 January 1966, was led by Maj. Bob Krone, 469th TFS Operations Officer [at the time].

The USAF Museum gratefully acknowledges Col. (Dr.) Robert Krone, USAF (Ret.) for providing the following account in his own words*....

"President Johnson believed that our bombing of North Vietnam (NVN), begun after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, would bring the leadership of North Vietnam to political negotiations for a peace the United States and the Government of South Vietnam could accept. By Christmas of 1965 he was ready to test that belief and stopped all missions of U.S. aircraft over the North.

The 469th Tactical Fighter Squadron from McConnell AFB had been the first F-105 Thunderchief squadron to be deployed on a permanent (PCS) basis to Southeast Asia (SEA) for the purpose of flying missions to the North. We arrived at Korat Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand on November 15, 1965. Until that date all flying over North Vietnam had been conducted by Air Force or Navy aircrews on temporary assignments to SEA. The next day, November 16th, we launched our first mission to the North and lost our first pilot and F-105. Captain Donald G. Green was shot down in the Haiphong Harbor area and was subsequently declared Killed-In-Action.

The loss rates for F-105 pilots in the first years of the Vietnam War were so high that the definition of the supreme optimist was cited as being "the F-105 pilot who stops smoking to prevent cancer."

On Christmas Eve 1965 the bombing halt began. At Korat there were mixed emotions. We knew that our destruction of the lines of supply from the North to the battlefields in the South could be rebuilt rapidly without our harassment. On the personal side it meant that reaching the magic 100 missions mark to complete the tour would now take longer, thus extending our separation from home and families. It also meant that we would be flying "non counters" in Laos and South Vietnam [Note: during this period only missions to North Vietnam counted towards the required 100 missions - ed.]. Loss rates along the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos were also high but those missions didn't count toward the 100 for the combat tour. We hoped the President's strategy would work and celebrated a no-flying Christmas Day with a squadron party in Commander Bill Cooper's trailer.

By mid-January, leadership in Washington had come to the conclusion that the benefits of the bombing halt were all with the other side and that Hanoi was not seriously considering our terms. Headquarters 2nd Air Division, in Saigon, alerted us to an imminent resumption of "Rolling Thunder" operations against North Vietnam. Henry Kissinger warned his counterparts in Hanoi that without some display of good faith toward a negotiated peace the President would resume NVN bombing missions.

But the weather over North Vietnam was terrible! Our first frag order [Note: a frag or fragmentation order assigned the daily targets, ed.] for NVN missions came from Saigon for January 28th. We briefed at 04:30 a.m. for a pre-dawn takeoff. The weather report showed all of NVN socked in with clouds and rain. At noon all missions were scrubbed. The same scenario was repeated on January 29th and January 30th - plan, brief, wait, then a weather scrub.

What we didn't know on the operational end of the war was that President Johnson had put the end of January as the limit of United States restraint. To our surprise the frag order of January 31st listed our targets and included the statement "Rolling Thunder missions for today 31 January will be executed regardless of weather." In Vietnam in 1966, with rare exceptions, pilots had to be able to see a target to attack it. In my 125 missions this was the only order to disregard weather. Flying large numbers of jets around Vietnam [increased the] probability of mission success [however, in poor weather it also increased the probability of mid-air collisions]. But the final words from Saigon on that frag order gave us a clue to the political forces at work: "The eyes of the world will be on your pilots today. Good luck and good hunting!"

When Captain Bud Millner, Capt. Glenn Belew, Captain Fred de Jong, Lt. Jerry Driscoll and I read that message at 04:00 in the 469th Operations room we suddenly got very serious about mission planning. We would be Elm Flight - 5 F-105's. A total of 16 F-105 flights were scheduled from Korat and Takhli RTAFB that day split between morning and afternoon flights. Takhli RTAFB was our sister base 350 miles to the West in south central Thailand.

Four ship flights were the norm, but we frequently had a 5th F-105 assigned carrying a camera pod under the wing to record on film the strikes of the other 4 in the flight. Fred de Jong, "The Flying Dutchman" was our #5 cameraman. Since the 469th was the first permanently assigned F-105 squadron we developed many of the tactics and traditions carried on by F-105 pilots through the war. Fred was the best camera chase pilot in the squadron and wrote the first procedures for others to follow.

The target was a complex of boat docks where the coastal highway, labelled Route lA, crossed a river that flowed into the Gulf of Tonkin 28 miles north of Dong Hoi and 7 miles south of Vinh Son (17'53N;106'27E). This was 50 miles north of the demilitarized zone at the 17th parallel. The highway bridge across the river had been previously destroyed and the North Vietnamese were using fleets of small boats to ferry military supplies and troops to the south. Intelligence thought that they might have rebuilt the bridge during the bombing halt. The four strike pilots would carry two LAU3 rocket pods under the wings and the standard 20mm gatling gun in the nose of the Thunderchief. Each rocket pod carried 19 rockets which could be fired individually or in clusters. Rockets were a good choice for both the target and the weather. With rockets you could make formation take-offs; the Thud was faster and more maneuverable with rockets than bombs; rockets could be fired at a lower altitude; and we could land with them if weather precluded getting to the target because the two pods together weighed less than 1,000 pounds. Fred de Jong, as #5, had a camera pod under his left wing and the Gatling gun.

The "Fighting Bulls" of the 469th Squadron in 1966 were a bunch of pros. The average flying time per pilot when we deployed from McConnell was 1,500 hours with over 1,000 jet fighter hours averaged per pilot. Most of the 24 pilots in the squadron had flown the F-105 for two years before this combat tour. The experience level for an F-105 never got higher as the war progressed because pilots had to be retrained into the F-105 from other jets. Captain Glenn "Wally" Belew was flying his 48th combat mission; Bud Millner, his 48th; the Flying Dutchman, his 51st; and Lt. Jerry Driscoll, our youngest pilot, at age 25, his 38th. We knew the Thud and we knew the territory. For this mission I would lead in tail number 743. Bud Millner would be element lead in #157. Wally Belew from Abilene Texas, would fly #2 in Thud #429. Jerry Driscoll, who had graduated from the Air Force Academy less than two years before, flew #4 in Thud #158, and Fred de Jong, from San Rafael, California would fly #5 in Thud #739. At age 35, I was the old man of the group.

We paid special attention to our personal survival gear as Master Sgt. Folks and Airman First Class "Gig" Gigantelli helped us with our G-suits, parachutes, Mae Wests, helmets and, of course, our Korat RTAFB 100-Mission hats. Conversation was subdued during the short ride in the van to the flight line at 07:15. We were dropped at our respective Thuds, ran the exterior walkaround inspection and were in the cockpits by 07:30 for an 07:45 start engine time. The crew chiefs must have gotten the word that there would be no weather abort today as there was no trivial chatter while they helped us strap in. At 07:35 Apple flight broke the morning quiet on the flight line with their start engines. That was Jimmy Jones, Hal Smith, and Joe Steen with Tony Gangol as spare. Then minutes later we hit the start button for a pneumatic start procedure. The Thud could start with a cartridge, too, but those were nice to have if you had to land at some South Vietnam field with minimum support.

At 08:05 Wally Belew and I released brakes for a formation take-off with Bud Millner and Jerry Driscoll seven seconds behind and Fred de Jong seven second behind them. The weather at Korat RTAFB was good enough for the join-up. We took a northeast heading that would take us over Eastern Thailand, Central Laos and South Vietnam just below the Military Demarcation Line, that had existed since 1954, and north of Da Nang. By the time I called our "Over the Fence" to the ground controllers at the Laos border we were in the weather. Since our target was in the southern panhandle of North Vietnam and on the coast, we had plenty of fuel to take us there without pre-target air refueling. That was a break. The weather forecast for the whole area was 500 foot to 1000 foot [cloud height above ground level] scattered to broken. That was a bummer. There were no radio transmissions or hand signals necessary. Glenn Belew, Bud Millner, Jerry Driscoll, and Fred de Jong were pros. They were right there hanging on my wing in perfect formation. We all knew whose job it was to get us to the target but I also knew they were sharp enough to fly close weather formation and still monitor their own instruments as a cross check to mine. When my Da Nang VOR/DME and the Doppler indicated we were over the western border of South Vietnam I began a let down. We had agreed that our last nine minutes of flight to the target would be a low level under the NVN radar. Vietnam combat was no exception to the age old military principle of surprise.

At the DMZ, South Vietnam is less than 50 miles west to east. At eight miles a minute we hit the eastern coast just six minutes after crossing the western border. I would have to rely on the Thud's air-to-ground radar, the Doppler, and dead reckoning for navigation. I was relieved when the radar distinguished the coastline at Hue and I began a left descending turn in the soup toward our final low-level run into target. Cap Lay, 33 miles south of Dong Hoi, was the radar initial point I had selected. It was just 9 minutes from target on a heading of 322 degrees at a ground speed of 420 knots. It slipped under the cursor on the radar and I punched the clock to begin our run. I eased down to 500 feet above the Gulf of Tonkin in hopes we would break out and be able to go visual. No luck. At 500 feet we were still in the clouds and with a flight of five ships I decided it was too risky to try any lower.

With five minutes to go I knew we had Dong Hoi only 10 miles off our left wings. We could see nothing and the radio was quiet. I visualized seven other flights of F-105s inbound to their targets and wondered how it was going with them. I kept a rapid crosscheck between radar, altimeter, and aircraft heading with occasional glances out at Glenn, Bud, Jerry, and Fred. The Thud in flight was beautiful and I had always loved the idea of one man in each jet-staking his life on the expertise of the one man in those other jets. That is the basis of fighter pilot comraderie that cannot be adequately explained. I loved those guys there on my wing. We had flown together so much that we intuitively knew what to expect from each other. I was almost embarrassed to make the required "Elm, set `em up hot" call at three minutes out from the target. I knew it was redundant, but there was always the chance that someone would forget to arm his weapons and do damage to his aircraft or fail to do damage to the enemy.

With two minutes and 14 miles to got to the target it was beginning to look hopeless. We were still in the soup although I had the coastline at the target area coming down the radar scope. Our plan was to begin the pullup to rocket roll-in altitude at one minute out. At 90 seconds out I switched to the 10 mile range on the radar. Just four miles north of the target there were hills up to 3400 feet so there was no way we could overfly the target at low altitude.

As the sweep second hand came through the 8 minute mark I called "Elm on the pull" and started the climb. The coast showed at 7 miles ahead. The flight members fell into close trail. If we had to abort, our plan was to break right in trail and head out to sea and back home. At 6,000 feet of altitude I knew we had to be very near a rocket roll-in position for the target and was about to call the abort when a hole opened up and THERE IT WAS! The river, the barges, the highway, and the coast appeared like a slide on the screen. Bud Millner saw it at the same time and called "Target at 10 o'clock." I called "Elm lead in" and Wally Belew called "And..they're..shooting." Wally was famous for that line delivered in his own special Abilene drawl. Even though we all saw the 37mm and 57mm flak that line was a tension remover and I knew the whole flight was laughing in their masks as I was. Wally, Bud, and Jerry followed me in at 3 to 5 second intervals with Fred de Jong right behind with his camera running. Everyone knew this would be a one-pass action and we fired the rockets in cluster.

We each called off and climbed out on slightly different headings through the weather until we were on top of the overcast. As they slid up on my wing we unhooked our masks, gave each other huge smiles, and exchanged the "thumbs-up" sign. WE HAD DONE IT! A minute later our good feelings were shattered when we heard Spruce Lead, Major Jack Gaudion, calling for Spruce two, Captain Eugene "Dave" Hamilton, and getting no response. Gaudion, Hamilton, John McCurdy, Mike Muskat, and Frank O'Neill were attempting to get to their target in the Vinh area. Dave Hamilton did not return.

What we didn't know until the end of the day was that we were the only flight to reach its target on 31 January 1966. All targets further inland were completely socked in and the 15 other flights from Korat and Takhli RTAFB's made valiant efforts against impossible situations. The President announced that the bombing of North Vietnam had been resumed in the face of North Vietnamese intransigence at the negotiations. All flight members received decorations. That night in Saigon, Air Force Academy grads were having a reunion. Jerry Driscoll flew there in a T-39 and was interviewed by the press. Such interviews were considered jinxes by many pilots as there had seemed to be a high percentage of pilots getting media exposure that were later shot down. On April 24, 1966 Jerry Driscoll was shot down on his 81st mission over NVN and spent 6 and 1/2 years as a POW in Hanoi."

* - bracketed [] comments added by the editor for clarity.

Source: Col. Robert Krone

http://fibec.flight.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/vietnam/469th/p28.htm

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