The Intersection of Multiple Conflicts: The Excavation of an F-4C Crash Site in the Midst of the Dien Bien Phu Battlefield

Summary

This is an abstract from the "A Multidimensional Mission: Crossing Conflicts, Synthesizing Sites, and Adapting Approaches to Find Missing Personnel" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Between 2014 and 2017, archaeologists with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) excavated an active rice paddy in northwest Vietnam in search of two missing U.S. service members from the Vietnam War. The incident aircraft, an F-4C, was shot down on March 15, 1966 near the town of Dien Bien Phu. During the excavations, DPAA archaeologists recovered evidence of the incident aircraft and osseous remains, but they also unearthed evidence of trenches and barbed wire associated with a prior engagement that occurred in 1954. During the French IndoChina War, French and Viet Minh forces fought for control of this remote outpost. The siege lasted for almost two months before General Giap overran and defeated the French forces. The recovery efforts conducted by DPAA produced evidence reflecting both events, representing the intersection of multiple conflicts that occurred just over a decade apart. Using historic imagery and topographic mapping, Site VM-02293 was deconstructed to examine the relationships between the later aircraft crash event and the earlier battlefield landscape. The results supported the initial association of the osseous materials with the aircraft crash event. Ultimately, through additional forensic analyses, the osseous remains were positively identified as both missing American individuals.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• A Multidimensional Mission: Crossing Conflicts, Synthesizing Sites, and Adapting Approaches to Find Missing Personnel

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24942