A Bird's-Eye View: Utilizing Wartime Aerial Imagery to Recover the Remains of a US Servicemember from the Vietnam War

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) is responsible for the recovery and identification of missing US servicemembers from past conflicts, including the Vietnam War. This case study involves over 25 years of investigation efforts that led to the recovery of an O-1 Bird Dog pilot shot down over Laos in 1967. The long investigative history for this case focused heavily on witness testimony, which indicated that the pilot had exited the plane before impact and was buried in a shallow grave by enemy forces. However, survey efforts at alleged burial locations failed to recover the remains of the pilot. Finally, in 2018, a possible impact scar location from wartime aerial imagery was archaeologically surveyed and a possible aircraft crash site was located. Block excavation operations at the crash site later recovered possible human remains, identification media, and material evidence consistent with a US loss. While DPAA was able to conduct a successful recovery in this case, more than 1,500 servicemembers from the Vietnam War are still missing. This poster highlights the need for investigators to develop multiple lines of evidence and take a big picture (bird’s-eye) view, rather than bird-dogging a single line of inquiry.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33218