Search for MIAs in Vietnam, Laos Ends With Mixed Results

The first coordinated U.S.-Vietnamese-Laotian search for Americans missing in action ended Sunday with mixed results.

Searchers discovered new remains and helicopter wreckage but were able to complete only about two-thirds of their cases because of three tropical storms that battered central Vietnam. Their search began Dec. 3.

The 44 Americans working both in Laos and Vietnam headed to Bangkok, Thailand, for a brief stopover before moving on to their home base in Honolulu to celebrate Christmas with their families. They are members of the Joint Task Force Full Accounting based at Camp H.M. Smith in Hawaii.

Even as this operation was ending, U.S. military spokesmen announced that the biggest search since the Vietnam War ended nearly 20 years ago will be launched in Vietnam on Jan. 6. More than 80 Americans and four excavation teams will take part, twice the number in the operation just ended.

“This will be our most ambitious yet,” said Army Lt. Col. David L. Fredrikson. He said search teams will also resume operations in Laos beginning Jan. 12.

But these operations in Vietnam and Laos next month will be independent of each other, unlike the one just completed in which the Americans and their Vietnamese and Laotian counterparts met at the border three times to exchange information.

The Americans excavated a site in Xepon district of Savannakhet province in Laos and uncovered human remains and wreckage of an Air Force search and rescue helicopter that was shot down with five men aboard in 1970.

On the Vietnamese side of the border, a witness led investigators to what he said was the burial site of an American in the A Shau Valley, a major North Vietnamese base west of Da Nang during the war. An excavation team dug up the remains, and Fredrikson confirmed that they are believed to be of an American.