Airmen’s Families Learn of Their Deaths : Victims: Divers identify missing AC-130 warplane found off the Saudi-Kuwaiti coast.

The long wait is over for the families of 14 missing airmen whose gunship disappeared in the skies over Kuwait five weeks ago. But unlike the jubilant relatives of the 21 American POWs freed this week by Iraq, there was no cause for celebration Wednesday in the Florida Panhandle.

“Air Force officials at the scene believe all crew members perished,” the Pentagon said in a brief statement. “The families of all 14 missing crew members have been notified.”

Wreckage of the AC-130 Spectre aircraft was discovered in the Persian Gulf about half a mile from the Saudi-Kuwaiti border. Scuba divers identified the wreckage as the missing gunship out of Hurlburt Field, Fla., headquarters of the Air Force Special Operations Command.

“We found out Monday that the aircraft had been located and they had divers searching,” said Dixon Walters Sr., whose son, Air Force Capt. Dixon Walters Jr., was aboard. “When he didn’t show up among the POWs being released, our hopes went down to zero.”

Kimberly Walters, the missing captain’s wife, was taking the news “very hard,” the senior Walters said.

“They have a daughter, Jessica, who is 3 1/2, and a boy, Hunter, who is 7 months,” he said. “He wrote his wife a letter that he would do it again and again if his country called on him.”

Beverly Blessinger’s husband, Staff Sgt. John P. Blessinger, also was killed in the crash. She said that family members of the downed airmen were having “a million different feelings” about the news. “I think we are all very proud,” she said.

The grim discovery of the AC-130 cuts by half the number of Americans classified by the Pentagon as missing in action. Although the 14 airmen will remain on the missing list during an investigation of the crash, a Pentagon spokeswoman said the practical “short list” now has 14 names.

For the families of those 14 servicemen still unaccounted for, word of the sunken wreckage came as a painful reminder that the war is not yet over for them. As the nation, almost giddy with its battlefield success, readies for ticker-tape parades and welcome-home parties, some families still lie awake at night wondering about their loved ones.

“It is the not knowing,” said Helene Turner of Richfield, Minn., whose son, Navy Lt. Charles J. Turner, has been missing since a Jan. 18 bombing mission. “It is actually torture.”

Charles Turner’s wife, Sharon, and his 7-month-old son, Andrew, arrived Tuesday in Richfield, a Minneapolis suburb where Turner grew up, to spend time with Helene Turner and her husband, Lowell. Sharon Turner lives at a naval air base in Whidbey Island, Wash., but both families decided the distance had become too great.

With smiling POWs parading across the living room television, the Turners needed to be together.

“We are gathering strength from each other,” Helene Turner said. “We are all getting very anxious. The war is over now--and now we want them to investigate the crash sites and tell us what happened.

“It is hard to think of him,” she said, pausing as she began to sob, “being there and not having him home.”

Charles Turner, 29, was the flight officer on an A-6 jet piloted by Navy Lt. William T. Costen, 27. Costen, a close buddy, sang at the wedding of Charles and Sharon Turner.

William S. Costen, a St. Louis physician, said he has not given up on his son and the other airman, although he got a real scare Tuesday when a Navy captain arrived at his home.

“He had called my wife and she got me out of a lunch,” the senior Costen said. “I zipped home expecting to hear one way or the other. But he just wanted me to know that none of the released personnel was Navy, so it couldn’t be Tom.”

The news was disappointing, but Costen said it was also hopeful: There is still no definite word that his son is dead.

In Rock Island, Ill., a city on the Iowa border, a dejected Diane Phillis turned off the television on Wednesday after watching it practically nonstop for two days. She had been hoping to see her son, Air Force Capt. Stephen Richard Phillis, who has been missing since Feb. 15 when his A-10 Warthog jet was shot down over northwestern Kuwait.

“I had been sitting by the TV watching CNN, hoping something would come on, even though I knew they would call me before I saw it on CNN,” she said. “It is just hard to turn it off sometimes. We just want to know. The waiting is getting pretty difficult.”

Times researcher Doug Connor in Seattle also contributed to this article.