Possible graves of two Vietnam War-era MIA pilots identified

Potential graves of two U.S. Air Force pilots shot down during the Vietnam War have been identified in the jungle of Quang Binh province, according to a new report by an agency that accounts for missing U.S. military personnel.

“One site is being recommended for excavation, while a second site awaits the corroborative testimony of another alleged eyewitness before it too is recommended for excavation,” the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said in a June 22 report.

The report focuses on attempts to find remains of 1st Lt. San D. Francisco and Maj. Joseph C. Morrison, who ejected from an F-4D Phantom jet that was hit by anti-aircraft fire over North Vietnam near the Laos border on Nov. 25, 1968.

The 18-page “family conference” document and a 9-page draft investigation report were released last week to Francisco’s sister, Terri-Francisco Farrell. Her son, Zak Farrell, is a Las Vegas resident.

The new information marks a turning point in the family’s quest to have Francisco’s remains returned to U.S. soil.

“I feel like it’s another step in the right direction, inching closer and closer,” Zak Farrell said last week. “I’m just hopeful it works out the way we’ve wanted it for so many years.”

But Francisco-Farrell said she’s confused by conflicting information from witnesses who visited the potential burial site with a joint U.S.-Vietnamese team in May. In all, there have been 18 joint investigations since wreckage from the crashed fighter was identified in 1989.

“I don’t know what to believe right now,” Francisco-Farrell, of Kennewick, Wash., said in a telephone interview.

Analysts are now trying confirm the grave site and refine map coordinates for one location.

“One site has been narrowed down to parameters small enough to warrant presentation to the EDB (Excavation Decision Board) for excavation,” one case analyst wrote in the report. “The other site requires more witnesses to further refine the exact location of the burial.”

“I think it’s confusion from mixing the two stories together,” Francisco-Farrell said, citing previous accounts based on statements from former North Vietnamese soldiers in an anti-aircraft battery.

They told investigators they were involved in the capture of her brother, who broke both thighs when he landed with his parachute. They said he was killed by either a rocket or a cluster bomb from a U.S. aircraft about two hours later, and was buried near a bomb crater.

Morrison reportedly survived after landing north of the crash site, but witnesses said he was shot and killed resisting capture.

Locating and excavating wartime graves isn’t easy. Even if a site is confirmed, digging in a former war zone can expose searchers to the danger of unexploded cluster munitions and land mines.

Francisco-Farrell spent three days last week in Washington, D.C. meeting with case workers and officials from the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency during its annual conference for families of unaccounted U.S. military personnel. She met the agency’s new director, Army Lt. Gen. Michael Linnington, who was appointed June 19 to lead the agency on a new course.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency was established this year to replace two predecessor agencies — the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office. The two agencies were deactivated Jan. 30 after revelations of mismanagement, failure to recover remains and the staging of phony arrival ceremonies for remains of war dead.

There are 1,627 U.S. servicemen from the Vietnam War listed as “unaccounted for.”

Francisco-Farrell said the Pentagon’s attempts to resolve her brother’s case has been hampered by inconsistency among agency personnel, and lack of continuity in reviewing reports going back 47 years. She delivered one key document, an after-action report by a pilot from Francisco’s squadron, that may not have been digitized for inclusion in the case record.

“The last two years they’ve just been spinning their wheels,” she said. “We’ve had nothing but temporary agencies for the last two years.”

The current case analyst, she said, has assured her “he was going to go back this week and work San’s case and determine if this draft report has any credibility.

“I went in with hope to hear that they had enough information to put San on the retrieval list. I came out of it feeling that some of the energy and hope I had has been stolen from me,” she said.

Francisco-Farrell said the U.S. government needs to put more emphasis on retrieving remains of Vietnam War veterans while witnesses are still alive.

“Those men went into the war without respect and they deserve respect to come home. There are known burial sites that should be excavated,” she said.

Contact Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308. Find him on Twitter: @KeithRogers2.