POOLE, CHARLIE SHERMAN
Name: Charlie Sherman Poole
Rank/Branch: E6/US Air Force, gunner
Unit: 307th Strat Wing, Utapao AB TH
Date of Birth: 07 June 1932
Home City of Record: Gibsland LA
Date of Loss: 19 December 1972
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 205900N 1054359E (WJ762203)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 2
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: B52D
Others In Incident: Richard W. Cooper (missing); Henry C. Barrows; Hal K.
Wilson; Fernando Alexander; Charles A. Brown, Jr. (all POWs released in 1973).
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 April 1991 from one or more of
the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence
with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W.
NETWORK.
REMARKS: POSS DEAD/LAO DONG
SYNOPSIS: Frustrated by problems in negotiating a peace settlement, and
pressured by a Congress and public wanting an immediate end to American
involvement in Vietnam, President Nixon ordered the most concentrated air
offensive of the war - known as Linebacker II - in December 1972. During the
offensive, sometimes called the "Christmas bombings," 40,000 tons of bombs
were dropped, primarily over the area between Hanoi and Haiphong. White
House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler said that the bombing would end only
when all U.S. POWs were released and an internationally recognized
cease-fire was in force.
On the first day of Linebacker II, December 18, 129 B52s arrived over Hanoi
in three waves, four to five hours apart. They attacked the airfields at Hoa
Lac, Kep and Phuc Yen, the Kinh No complex and the Yen Vien railyards. The
aircraft flew in tight cells of three aircraft to maximize the mutual
support benefits of their ECM equipment and flew straight and level to
stabilize the bombing computers and ensure that all bombs fell on the
military targets and not in civilian areas.
The pilots of the early missions reported that "wall-to-wall SAMS"
surrounded Hanoi as they neared its outskirts. The first night of bombing,
December 18 and 19, two B52s were shot down by SAMs.
Onboard the first aircraft shot down on December 18 was its pilot, LTCOL
Donald L. Rissi and crewmen MAJ Richard E. Johnson, CAPT Richard T. Simpson,
CAPT Robert G. Certain, 1LT Robert J. Thomas and SGT Walter L. Ferguson. Of
this crew, Certain, Simpson and Johnson were captured and shown the bodies
of the other crew members. Six years later, the bodies of Rissi, Thomas and
Ferguson were returned to U.S. control by the Vietnamese. Certain, Simpson
and Johnson were held prisoner in Hanoi until March 29, 1973, when they were
released in Operation Homecoming.
Capt. Hal K. Wilson was in the lead aircraft of a B52 cell from Utapao. Also
on board his aircraft were crew men MAJ Fernando Alexander, CAPT Charles A.
Brown, Jr., CAPT Henry C. Barrows, CAPT Richard W. Cooper Jr. (the
navigator), and SGT Charlie S. Poole (the tailgunner). Wilson's aircraft was
hit by a SAM near his target area and crashed in the early morning hours of
December 19, sustaining damage to the fuselage. In the ensuing fire, there
was no time for orderly bailout, but as later examination of radio tapes
indicated, all six crewmen deployed their parachutes and evidently safely
ejected. The aircraft damage report indicated that all six men were
prisoner.
Radio Hanoi announced in news broadcasts between 19 and 22 December that the
six crewmen had been captured. When the war ended, however, only four of the
crew returned from Hanoi prisons. Hanoi has remained silent about the fate
of Charlie Poole and Richard Cooper.
The Christmas Bombings, despite press accounts to the contrary, were of the
most precise the world had seen. Pilots involved in the immense series of
strikes generally agree that the strikes against anti-aircraft and strategic
targets was so successful that the U.S., had it desired, "could have taken
the entire country of Vietnam by inserting an average Boy Scout troop in
Hanoi and marching them southward."
To achieve this precision bombing, the Pentagon deemed it necessary to stick
to a regular flight path. For many missions, the predictable B52 strikes
were anticipated and prepared for by the North Vietnamese. Later, however,
flight paths were altered and attrition all but eliminated any hostile
threat from the ground.
Linebacker II involved 155 Boeing B52 Stratofortress bombers stationed at
Anderson AFB, Guam (72nd Strat Wing) and another 50 B52s stationed at Utapao
Airbase, Thailand (307th Strat Wing), an enormous number of bombers with
over one thousand men flying the missions. However, the bombings were not
conducted without high loss of aircraft and personnel. During the month of
December 1972, 61 crewmembers onboard ten B52 aircraft were shot down and
were captured or declared missing. (The B52 carried a crew of six men;
however, one B52 lost carried an extra crewman.) Of these 61, 33 men were
released in 1973. The others remained missing at the end of the war. Over
half of these survived to eject safely. What happened to them?
Reports mount that have convinced many authorities that Americans are still
held captive in Southeast Asia. Are Poole and Cooper among them? Do they
know the country they love has abandoned them? Isn't it time we found them
and brought them home?
==========================
The New Orleans Times-Picayune
Sunday, March 12, 2000
FAMILY WAITS TO LAY PILOT DAD TO REST
VIETNAM WAR NOT OVER UNTIL BODY COMES HOME
James Minton
The Advocate
Ruth Poole has vivid memories of the day she learned her father's plane
had been shot down during a bombing mission over the North Vietnamese
capital of Hanoi.
"It was hard to believe," said Poole, who was then nearing her 15th
birthday.
After 27 years, the war still intrudes into her life as she struggles
with resolving the loss of her father, whose body has been recovered but not
released for burial.
In December 1972, President Nixon ordered an all-out bombing campaign
against North Vietnam to push the North Vietnamese back to the peace talks,
which had stalled in Paris.
Called Operation Linebacker II, the campaign included the first use of Air
Force B-52 bombers over North Vietnam, including the plane "Rose 01" for
which Tech. Sgt. Charlie Poole of Gibsland was the tail gunner.
Based at Westover Air Force Base, Mass., his plane was operating that
month from U-Tapao Air Base, Thailand, and went on a mission on Dec. 18, the
first night of Linebacker II.
*** No ordinary day ***
"My Mom took us to school that morning as usual. We knew a B-52 (from
Westover) had been shot down during the night, but we didn't know which
one," she recalled.
As she and her sister neared their duplex apartment after school, they
noticed an unusual number of cars parked outside.
"I said I hoped it wasn't at our house, but when we got closer I could see
all the uniforms inside and I knew it was Dad's plane. It was quite
upsetting," she said.
Before the bombing halted on Dec. 29, many other families at Westover
received grim news from the war zone.
"Every day, they came and got someone out of class. They lost a lot of
B-52s from Westover," she said.
Although the Pentagon never classified Charlie Poole as a prisoner of war,
four members of the crew bailed out after the plane was hit by two
surface-to-air missiles. Poole and the sixth crewman, Capt. Richard Cooper,
were unable to eject.
*** Unending battle ***
Hanoi thought it had captured an entire B-52 crew, which it paraded
through the streets. A local newspaper listed Charlie Poole as a POW, giving
the family a glimmer of hope, she said.
Those hopes were dashed as Americans made plans to welcome the former POWs
home.
"I remember when Mom got the call that Dad's name was not on the list and
wouldn't be released.
"I guess the whole thing was that the war wasn't over for us. When he
wasn't on the list, it was quite silent in our home for a long time," she
said.
Charlie Poole's status remained as "missing in action" until June 8, 1979,
when the Defense Department declared him dead.
Not long after Rose 01 went down, the Poole family moved back to Bossier
City, where her mother, who met her husband when she was in the Army Medical
Corps in Denver, became active in the state chapter of a national
organization for families of missing troops.
Ruth Poole, now manager of Albertson's in Baker, also became active in the
organization, a role that has taken her to the White House for meetings with
every president since Nixon and to gatherings all over the country.
*** No resolution ***
In their quest to resolve their father's status, Poole's two brothers
visited the crash site in Vietnam in 1995, she said.
"Mom wanted to see that Dad would be accounted for, that he wouldn't just
remain missing in action," she said.
In July 1994, the family visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
Washington, although her mother was in a wheelchair and required morphine to
ease the pain of cancer, Poole said.
After seeing her husband's name on the black granite wall, Laura Poole
told her children not to give up.
After the Clinton administration normalized diplomatic relations with the
Vietnamese, arrangements were made to examine the crash site of Rose 01,
about nine miles from Hanoi.
After several excavations and DNA comparisons four years ago, the Army lab
positively identified 19 bone fragments that were to be turned over to the
family for burial. The Poole family is still waiting for a final resolution.
Poole said part of the delay has been in identifying the remains of the
other missing crewman. She also said President Clinton is credited with the
diplomatic initiative that led to the discovery of her father's body but his
administration has not provided enough money to adequately finance the
identification lab and the search efforts.
Poole is looking forward to the day when she and her brothers and sisters
are allowed to bury the remains of their father next to their mother's grave
in Bossier City.
"I hope it is soon. I'd like to see this resolved. We've all been in this
fight together," she said.
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