BAILEY JOHN EDWARD
Remains identified 03/17/99
Name: John Edward Bailey
Rank/Branch: United States Air Force/O3/pilot
Unit:
Date of Birth: 11 October 1936
Home City of Record: Minneapolis MN
Date of Loss: 10 May 1966
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 171400 North 1064300 East
Status (in 1973): Presumptive Finding of Death
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: F105D
Missions:
Other Personnel in Incident:
Refno: 0335
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw
data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA
families, published sources, interviews and CACCF = Combined Action
Combat Casualty File.
REMARKS: SURVIVAL UNLIKELY
CACCF notes the F105 crashed
No. 019-M
MEMORANDUM FOR CORRESPONDENTS March 17, 1999
The remains of three American servicemen previously unaccounted-for from
Southeast Asia have been identified and are being returned to their families
for burial in the United States.
They are identified as Navy Cmdr. John C. Mape, San Francisco, Calif.; Air
Force Maj. John E. Bailey, Minneapolis, Minn.; and Navy Petty Officer 2nd
Class John F. Hartzheim, Appleton, Wis.
On April 13, 1966, Mape was flying an armed reconnaissance mission over Nghe
Tinh Province North Vietnam when an enemy surface-to air missile struck his
A-1H Skyraider, destroying it. Other pilots in the flight made a visual
inspection of the crash site and concluded there were no survivors.
In May 1991 a joint U.S./Vietnamese team, led by the Joint Task Force-Full
Accounting, traveled to Nghe Tinh Province and interviewed several local
witnesses who recalled the crash of a U.S. aircraft in April or May 1966.
The witnesses also indicated that the site had been heavily scavenged for
metal in the early 1990s. The initial visit to the crash site in 1991 and a
subsequent visit in July 1993 provided little material evidence.
In August 1994 a U.S./Vietnamese team learned that a group of men
had been arrested in Dong Nai Province in late 1992 for illegally excavating
and taking remains from the crash site. Vietnamese authorities confiscated
the remains and turned them over to U.S. anthropologists. On May 10, 1966,
Bailey was leading a combat strike mission over Quang Binh Province, North
Vietnam. Shortly after expending his ordnance, Bailey's F-105D Thunderchief
was seen to tumble end-over-end into the ground with its canopy in place.
Other members of the flight circled the impact area but observed no
survivor.
In 1990 a joint U.S./Vietnamese team interviewed several local villagers in
Quang Binh Province who provided information including an F-105 aircraft
data plate that appeared to correlate with Bailey's loss. The team visited
the recorded crash site but saw no indication of wreckage. A second visit
to that site in 1993 confirmed the absence of evidence there.
In July 1995 another joint team performed a preliminary survey of the crash
site which led to an excavation a month later. The team located aircraft
fragments, pilot-related personal equipment as well as human remains.
On Feb. 27, 1968, Hartzheim was on board an OP-2E Neptune flying a
reconnaissance mission over Khammouan Province, Laos. While over the target
area the aircraft was struck by an enemy 37mm antiaircraft round, causing
the radar well and bomb bay to catch fire. Shrapnel from the explosion
struck Hartzheim. He collapsed at the rear of the aircraft during
evacuation and was presumed dead. The crew parachuted out of the aircraft
as it entered a steep climb before crashing. A subsequent search and rescue
tea m succeeded in rescuing only seven of the nine crew members.
In January 1985 a unilateral turnover from a Laotian source to the Joint
Casualty Resolution Center Liaison Office in Bangkok consisted of several
bone fragments, a compass and a plastic E-and-E (Escape and Evasion) map.
The source indicated that the items were recovered near a 1968 crash site of
an U.S. aircraft in Khammouan Province.
In October and December 1994 joint U.S./Lao teams traveled to the Khammouan
Province to interview several villagers with information about the crash.
While surveying the crash site the team found aircraft wreckage, a fragment
of a possible knife sheath and human remains. Successive visits in 1995 and
1996 recovered more remains, life support equipment and other crew-related
items.
Anthropological analysis of the remains and other evidence by the U.S. Army
Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii confirmed the identification of
Mape, Bailey and Hartzheim. With the accounting of these three servicemen,
2,069 Americans are listed as unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War.
The U.S. government welcomes and appreciates the cooperation of the
government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Lao People's
Democratic Republic, which resulted in the accounting of these servicemen.
We hope that such cooperation will bring increased results in the future.
Achieving the fullest possible accounting for these Americans is of the
highest national priority.
-END-
Journalist recalls father he never knew
By David Bailey
CHICAGO, April 1 (Reuters) - An answering machine message from my mother on
St. Patrick's Day told me the Pentagon had officially confirmed my father's
death, 33 years after he was shot down over Vietnam.
A tooth and a few bone fragments brought to a close a lifetime of searching
and the efforts of hundreds of people chronicled in a file cabinet full of
government reports. I was 10 months old when my father died. He was 29.
St. Patrick's Day was a serendipitous occasion to make the identification
public, a family friend noted. It was on St. Patrick's Day in 1957 that
Patricia Gavin was introduced to John Bailey. Everyone called him Jack.
Although I was barely five months old when he left early in 1966, holidays
always bring him to mind. They always will.
As a reporter, I am often asked to distill lives into terse passages. The
facts here are simple: The remains of Air Force fighter pilot Maj. John
Edward Bailey, a Minnesota native, were identified from anthropological
analysis and other evidence. This leaves 2,069 Americans unaccounted for
from the war, which took 58,000 US lives from the 1950s to 1975.
We knew it was coming. At every step of the investigation the government's
joint task force for accounting notified my mother by phone and followed up
with a letter. She would relay the information to my sister, Molly, brother,
John, and me.
PILOT'S REMAINS, RELATED ITEMS DISCOVERED
The latest report was based on the recovery of a tooth and small bones from
a crater in the former North Vietnam, apparently carved by his F-105 jet in
May 1966. The excavation also yielded possible pieces of a flight helmet, a
parachute harness ring and a zipper pull tab.
The first reports arrived within days of his crash. One of the other two
pilots on the mission reported that Jack's plane lurched to the right, he
jettisoned pylons and a belly tank and his F-105 tumbled nose-over-tail and
slammed into the ground.
The canopy appeared to be intact and the pilot heard no tone in his headset,
which indicated Jack had not ejected.
He was listed as missing in action, though there was little doubt that he
had been killed. That whisper of a doubt disappeared after the Paris Peace
Accords in 1973, when he was not among the prisoners of war returned to the
United States.
In July 1973, Mom held a memorial service. One member of an honor guard
handed her a neatly folded American flag. Another sounded Taps. At age
seven, I did not understand why.
A white headstone was placed in a new, narrowly spaced section at Fort
Snelling National Cemetery near Minneapolis to honor those whose remains had
yet to be recovered.
Every Memorial Day, we walked through the cemetery. Mom carried two sets of
flowers, one for my father and one for his older brother Bill, who died in
an Air Force training accident in 1957. For a while Jack's marker was easy
to find, but that small section has grown quite large over the years.
DOING ITS BEST TO SALVE THE PAIN
>From time to time someone claimed to have his remains, or information
leading to them. Sometimes they offered military ID cards or vaccination
certificates as proof, and the military dutifully turned over the
information and its analysis of its veracity. It was clear people were doing
the best they could to salve the pain, but there was little anyone could do.
While a college student, I made a tracing of my father's name at the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial in Washington and attended a POW/MIA family gathering. At
the White House, President Reagan read a speech and a squad of jet fighters
flew over in a missing man formation.
Several times friends brought back tracings of his name from ``the wall'' as
well. Those pencil outlines provided more comfort than any words could.
Later, as U.S.-Vietnam relations began to thaw, more reports trickled in.
In 1990, a joint U.S.-Vietnam field team interviewed residents in an area
north of the former DMZ, following up reports of a downed F-4 jet fighter.
Residents steered them to a site they said involved an F-105 instead.
The crater, now a pond about eight yards (meters) across and several feet
deep, had no visible wreckage but the team decided the site might
``correlate'' to my dad because his F-105 was the only one thought to have
crashed in that vicinity.
In 1994 the joint task force recommended excavating the pond. I knew then
that I had to see not only the site where my father may have died but also
Vietnam, the country.
In October 1995, a guide from Vietnam's MIA office and a Quang Binh Province
official took me to the site. We walked from a small cluster of houses under
a stand of trees along a dirt path to a berm that separated small rice
fields.
THOUGHTS, AND A PRAYER, FOR MISSING FATHER
I asked my escorts for a few minutes alone at the site to collect my
thoughts. I also wanted to say a prayer for my father and the others who had
died in that killing ground, though I kept that to myself.
Had I not known already that a jet had carved out the crater I would not
have made a connection. A cow stood off to one side munching grass and the
mild heat fogged my glasses. I looked out over the pond and across the
valley to distant mountains, trying to imagine the place three decades
before.
I couldn't then, and I can't now.
I never knew him and no ream of reports or crash site visit can bring him
back. Nor can a black-and-white photograph of him grimacing and pointing to
bullet holes in his jet fuselage.
The empty space cannot be filled by other people, nor should it be, although
many people have comforted us over the years and continue to do so.
Within days of the Pentagon's March 17 statement, my mother received a bulky
package. It was a POW/MIA bracelet with my father's name on it. There was
also a short letter from the man who had worn it through high school saying
he had kept it in a desk drawer should the occasion ever arise to deliver
it.
As my family decides how to honor my father's remains, I consider what keeps
him alive for me. It is hearing about his close-knit friendships and his
love of flying. It is listening to a recording of his voice, which reminds
me so much of his younger brother, with speech patterns we all share.
An unofficial squadron historian at Korat Air Base in Thailand, my father
used a company tape recorder to send a message home in April 1966. He talked
much as other servicemen have, before and since, of missing his family,
wanting to be home, and vaguely of the chance he might not make it back.
``I imagine being a mama and a papa to three kids is a real handful,'' he
told my mother. ``I don't know if I would want to try it or not, know what I
mean?''
-----------------------
April 11, 1999
As new POWs wait in Balkans, a Vietnam MIA flag is folded
Chuck Haga / Star Tribune
The marchers came down the State Capitol mall Saturday, a bagpiper at the
front and 40 black POW-MIA flags massed behind an honor guard.
The flag-bearers turned into the Vietnam memorial and formed a half-circle,
facing Molly Bailey Quinn.
A color guard of Vietnam veterans marches from the Capitol to the memorial.
Two Vietnam veterans in field uniforms carefully folded one POW-MIA flag
that had been separated from the others. They handed the flag, with its
haunting silhouette of a soldier, head bowed, to Maj. Gen. Eugene Andreotti,
adjutant general of Minnesota.
Andreotti carried the flag to Quinn, handed it to her, stepped back and
saluted.
"Your father has come home," he said.
Nearly 33 years after he died, the Pentagon announced last month that it had
identified the remains of Air Force Maj. John Bailey of Minneapolis.
He was on a combat mission on May 10, 1966, when his F-105D Thunderchief
crashed with its canopy in place. His remains were recovered from the site
during a joint U.S.-Vietnamese excavation in August 1995.
Quinn, a teacher who lives in Plymouth, was 3 when her father died.
"It's nice that this can bring closure -- for a lot of other people, too,"
she said Saturday.
Just then, Carol Kratz introduced herself and handed Quinn a bracelet
engraved with John Bailey's name and the date he was reported missing.
Kratz, of Shoreview, said she had worn the bracelet for 10 years. She cried
as she took it off to give to Quinn.
"It's good, though," she said. "Good that they know."
Like family
The service was organized by the Minnesota League of POW/MIA Families and
Minnesota Won't Forget, a group that for years has carried the flags at
special events. Each represents a Minnesotan missing from the Vietnam War.
"The flag we're retiring and giving to the family has been in parades from
the Iron Range to Albert Lea," said Karen Hanley of Minnesota Won't Forget.
"It's hard. It's almost like you're bringing a family member home."
It was the first POW/MIA flag retirement since 1995, when Warrant Officer
Richard Knutson was laid to rest in a cemetery in his native Hallock, Minn.,
22 years after he was killed. A Vietnamese farmer who had buried Knutson led
investigators to his grave in 1994.
Several participants in Saturday's memorial talked of their fear of new
POW/MIA lists.
Gerald Carlson, a Navy air veteran of Vietnam who led the ceremony, closed
it by speaking the names of three US soldiers captured March 31 by Serb
forces at the Kosovo-Macedonia border.
"Steven M. Gonzales . . . Christopher J. Stone . . . Andrew Ramirez . . .
lost 31 March 1999, Yugoslavia," Carlson intoned. "Don't forget their names.
Pray God they come home safe."
Said Hanley, of Minnesota Won't Forget: "We've had requests already for
bracelets. We've ordered them, and they should be in by next week."
Rick Bailey, 51, of Rogers, one of two brothers of John Bailey who attended
Saturday's memorial, also had the three captured Americans on his mind.
"There is no sense of finality here because of the ongoing conflicts," he
said.
Added brother Mike Bailey, 53, of Minneapolis: "We should do everything we
can to make sure it never happens again."
John Bailey was 29 when he crashed. Seven years later, in July 1973, the Air
Force changed his status from "missing in action" to "killed in action," and
a memorial service was held at Holy Family Catholic Church in St. Louis
Park, where the family was living.
His remains have been brought back to the United States, family members said
Saturday, but burial arrangements are incomplete.
Among the speakers Saturday was Nghief Nguyen, president of the Fellowship
of Republic of Vietnam Servicemen of Minnesota, who saluted Bailey as a
hero. Other veterans of the South Vietnamese army now living in Minnesota
were on hand.
"His image will never fade from our memory," Nguyen told members of the
Bailey family.
A premonition?
Mike Bailey said his brother John, better known as Jack, "loved to fly." He
had entered the service despite -- or perhaps because of -- the death of an
older brother, Bill, in a 1957 stateside crash while with the Air Force.
"There was a photograph Jack sent back to us about three weeks before he was
shot down," Mike Bailey said. "He was kneeling by his plane. He had just got
back from a mission, and there were these rips along his fuselage. They were
from small-arms fire.
"Jack was grinning, but he had his eyes closed. It was a look that said, 'I
got back!' "
John Bailey's wife, Patricia, lives in St. Louis Park. She didn't attend the
memorial Saturday. Military officials called her in February with news that
her former husband's remains had been identified.
In addition to daughter Molly, Bailey had two sons: John Jr., who was 2 when
his father died, and David, who was just 5 months old. They were not at the
service. For family members, there have been other mourning moments in the
past 33 years.
David Bailey, who visited the crash site in Vietnam after it was excavated,
was 4 years old when his family was featured in a 1970 Minneapolis Star
story.
"I never knew what he looked like," he said in 1970. "That's why I want him
back."
With the accounting of Bailey and two other servicemen whose remains were
identified at the same time, 2,069 Americans are now listed as
unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War.
And in Minnesota, there are now 39 black POW/MIA flags.
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