The bodies of nine men who died in a 1968 Navy air mission in eastern Laos during the Vietnam War have been identified by the Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii. Hawaii lab IDs 9
killed in Vietnam War
Star-Bulletin staff
The completion of the project last week ended a joint effort between the laboratory at Hickam Air Force Base and a Joint Task Force-Full Accounting unit at Camp Smith that began March 1996. Recovering the remains from the mountainous site in Laos was "one of the most difficult undertakings in the history of the task force," according to a release yesterday. It was delayed after the site was placed on a safety restriction for three years.
The bodies accounted for the entire crew of the U.S. Navy OP-2E Neptune patrol plane that crashed into the Phou Louang Mountain on a Jan. 11, 1968, mission to drop sensors along the jungle floor capable of detecting enemy troops' movements. None of the sailors was connected to Hawaii.
There are still 1,891 Americans unaccounted for from the conflict in Southeast Asia.
