In early April of 2001, an advance team for a 95-member
group of military service members visited the post-war Vietnam, coordinating
the logistics to begin work at six MIA recovery sites the following month – the
unit's 65th expedition, called a Joint Field Activity. For this, a Russian-made
M-17 helicopter was chartered from the Vietnamese military to aid in expediting
equipment and personnel – as JTF-FA had been doing since 1992, according to
Alan Liotta, acting director of the POW-MIA office.
Late on the afternoon of Saturday, April 7th, 2001, one of
the chartered helicopters was ferrying personnel from Vinh to Hue.
A Vietnamese official said the helicopter had been on a
flight to the central city of Hue, leaving Vinh at 4:15 in the afternoon, and
had been scheduled to stop at Dong Hoi, the Quang Binh provincial capital,
before heading south to Hue. But earlier that day, a member of the JTF-FA team
called their headquarters in Hawaii to report that they were canceling a stop
in Dong Hoi because of bad weather.
Aboard the helicopter, piloted by
Vietnamese, were seven Americans – all active duty military servicemen – and
nine Vietnamese military men. The Americans: Army Lieutenant Colonel Rennie M.
Cory Jr., the outgoing commanding officer of Det 2.
The other Americans aboard were
Army Lieutenant Colonel George D. Martin III, the incoming commanding officer
of Det 2, from Hopkins, South Carolina, and who previously commanded the 1st
Battalion, 32nd Infantry at Fort Drum, New York; Air Force Major Charles E.
Lewis, the unit’s deputy commander, from of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and, prior
to his JTF-FA service, was responsible for the design and construction of the
F-15 Eagle mounted on a pedestal at the entrance to the 333rd Fighter
Interceptor Wing at Eglin AFB in Florida, and was a a military-history buff
trained as an engineer; Army Sergeant 1st Class Tommy J. Murphy, a Mortuary
Affairs specialist with the part of Central Identification Laboratory Hawai'i
(CILHI) and the team's Sergeant who was from Georgia, but lived in Honolulu;
Air Force Master Sergeant Steven L. Moser, an Vietnamese Intelligence Analyst
& Linguist who was from San Diego, but also lived in Honolulu; Navy Chief
Petty Officer Pedro J. Gonzales, a Hospital Corpsman from Buckeye, Arizona, who
was a crack diver and served as the team's medic; and Air Force Technical
Sergeant Robert M. Flynn, a Vietnamese Linguist from Huntsville, Alabama, who
served as Cory's translator.
The Vietnamese aboard the
helicopter were: Deputy Director Nguyen Than Ha of the Vietnamese Liaison
Office; Senior Colonel Tran Van Bien, Deputy Director of the Vietnamese Office
for Seeking Missing Persons (VNOSMP) and former General in the People's Army of
Vietnam; Vietnamese Air Force Lieutenant Colonels Nguyen Van Ha & Nguyen
Thanh Son, Majors Nguyen Huu Nham & Vu Pham The Kien; and Lieutenants Giap
Thanh Ngan, Pham Duy Dung, and Dang Ngoc.
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