It was Christmas Eve 1965 when the Air Force plane nicknamed "Spooky" took off from Vietnam for a combat mission. The crew sent out a "mayday" signal while flying over Laos, and after that, all contact was lost. Two days of searches turned up nothing.
For years, that was all the families knew about what happened to the six servicemen aboard the plane. Now, nearly 50 years after the AC-47D went down, a measure of finality comes Monday: Remains from the six men will be buried with full military honors in a single casket at Arlington National Cemetery.
The burial comes after the recovery of remains in 2010 and 2011 by joint U.S.-Laotian search teams. Examiners relied on dental records, personal items recovered from the site and circumstantial evidence to conclude that the recovered remains are representative of all six Air Force servicemen: Col. Joseph Christiano of Rochester, N.Y.; Col. Derrell B. Jeffords of Florence, S.C.; Lt. Col. Dennis L. Eilers of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Chief Master Sgt. William K. Colwell of Glen Cove, N.Y.; Chief Master Sgt. Arden K. Hassenger of Lebanon, Ore.; and Chief Master Sgt. Larry C. Thornton of Idaho Falls, Idaho.
The Air Force gave all six posthumous promotions, a military spokeswoman said.
Dribs and drabs of information came in over the years, and some family members heard rumors that loved ones had been seen alive. But mostly it was the passage of time that led relatives to conclude their loved ones had perished.
"The sad part about our situation is for seven years, we hoped he was alive," said Jeanne Jeffords, 86, of Temecula, Calif., whose husband, Derrell, was on board. Their son, Terry, was 16 years old when Jeffords died and their daughter, Deryl, was 13. "We hoped he was a prisoner. Seven years later, they released all the prisoners. The Air Force called me at 3 a.m. one morning and said, 'We're sorry to tell you, but your husband is not among the prisoners.'"
Ron Thornton, who now lives in Bozeman, Mont., remembered reacting to news his father's plane had gone missing with the optimism of the sixth-grader he was in 1965: At some point, he was just sure his father would come walking out of the jungle and back into his family's arms.
"The world being the size it was, I just thought he'd been misplaced," Ron Thornton said. "I really believed they would find him."
Weeks turned into months, months to years. The family kept Thornton's picture on the wall of their home in Great Falls, Mont., along with his medals.
Even now, he said, he doesn't expect Monday's burial will completely erase the questions from his mind, given that there is no definitive DNA evidence of his father's remains.
"There will always be this little hint of doubt at the back of my mind," he said. "It would be nice if they would have the proof positive."
Joseph Christiano's wife, Josephine, took an especially active role in the search, according to her daughter Elaine. Josephine Christiano addressed Congress and a special session at the Paris Peace Talks, went to Thailand and Laos looking for information, and joined a family support group.
She said her mother's greatest fear was that her father was captured, held prisoner and died in captivity.
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