Incident Date 671130

[Bruce Swander]

Looking at this incident (and many others like it), I'm confused as to why these men weren't coded as MIA's during the time they were missing - or at least coded as Died while Missing (A3). Can anyone tell me what status the Unit had them in for a year, and what their families were told? It doesn't appear that there were eyewitnesses to know if they were shot down, survived and captured, etc, - but their names do not show up on the PMSEA MIA lists. Was there a 1stMAW Directive in place to wait for a year before someone was declared MIA?

Reviewing the KIA Incidents, there are many such cases like this where sites/remains weren't found for years later...but none of the names show up on the official MIA lists kept. Families had to be told something - were they 'presumed dead' and benefits stopped on the day of the crash?

There has to be some type of logical (?) answer to this that I'm missing and would like to get a better understanding of it.

[Larry Zok]

Check with Big Al Barbour, he is the historian for Popasmoke and has done extensive research on all of our KIA/MIA/s. You can link to him through the contact us on the front page.

[Al Barbour]

Bruce,

From what I have observed, in most cases the families were told that the crew/passengers were MIA. The official records at the Navy Yard also indicated that the men were MIA. I do not believe that the MIA status had any reason to be delayed, and to my knowledge, it was not delayed by any directive.

It was easier to determine the staus of a helicopter crew, as there were records on the flight line or in the S3 (Ops). However, passengers were a different story, as many were not on a manifest, especially when taken from the battlefield as medevacs.

In one case in which I am familiar (Lt Dean W. Reiter - KIA 660925), there was no follow-up after the bodies/wreckage and circumstantial evidence was examined. The family went 30+ years without knowing that the death had been confirmed and the classification changed. In this case, I examined the official reports at the Navy Yard and they showed both MIA and KIA data recorded. Unfortunately, the family was not informed of the latter status until Popasmoke contacted his parents.

I have no information on the initiation or termination of benefits for the families, although I did notice that some men continued to earn rank and were not declared KIA until much later during or after the Vietnam War when they were not returned as POWs. Col. Winfield Sisson was MIA in 1965 and declared KIA in 1983. During that time, he went from Captain to Colonel posthumously.