Airman Missing From Vietnam War Accounted For The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today
that the remains of a serviceman, missing from the Vietnam War, has been
identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military
honors.
U.S. Air Force Col. Francis J. McGouldrick Jr. of New Haven, Conn., will be
buried Dec. 13, at Arlington National Cemetery. On Dec. 13, 1968, McGouldrick
was on a night strike mission when his B-57E Canberra aircraft collided with
another aircraft over Savannakhet Province, Laos. McGouldrick was never seen
again and was listed as missing in action.
After the war in July 1978, a military review board amended his official
status from missing in action to presumed killed in action.
Between 1993 and 2004, joint U.S/Lao People's Democratic Republic (L.P.D.R.)
teams attempted to locate the crash site with no success. On April 8, 2007, a
joint team located a possible crash site near the village of Keng Keuk,
Laos.
From October 2011 to May 2012, joint U.S./L.P.D.R. teams excavated the site
three times and recovered human remains and aircraft wreckage consistence with a
B-57E aircraft.
In the identification of McGouldrick, scientists from the Joint POW/MIA
Accounting Command (JPAC) and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory
(AFDIL) used circumstantial evidence and forensic identification tools, such as
mitochondrial DNA – which matched McGouldrick's great nephew and niece.
Today there are 1,644 American service members that are still unaccounted-for
from the Vietnam War.
For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO website at www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call 703-699-1169. |
We do not have information on individuals beyond what is listed on this site.
For more information, visit www.dpaa.mil or call 703-699-1420.
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