A United States pilot who disappeared during a reconnaissance mission during the Vietnam War has finally been located, military officials said Tuesday.
U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Donald W. Downing was assigned to the 557th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 12th Tactical Fighter Wing, 7th Air Force, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, in September 1967. said in a news releaseDowning, 33, was piloting one of two planes on a nighttime armed reconnaissance mission over the area then known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 5, 1967.
According to the agency, as both planes were racing toward the target, the first plane saw “a large, bright fireball in the air.” Downing did not respond to the radio call on his F-4C Phantom II. And although search and rescue efforts began in daylight, electronic and visual searches of the area turned up nothing.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
More than a decade later, on April 28, 1978, Downing was reported killed in action. He was later posthumously promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the DPAA said. His name was entered with the names of other unidentified Vietnam War soldiers in the Court of the Missing of the U.S. Battle Monuments Commission at the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.
The DPAA said the incident had been investigated for decades, but with no results. Ultimately, in the spring of 2024, a recovery team found life-saving equipment, potential material evidence, aircraft debris, unexploded ordnance and possible bone material – bones – at a site in Quang Binh province, Vietnam.
DPAA uses the intersection of “history, diplomacy, and science” to create an identity, said Ashley Wright, the agency's public affairs specialist. told CBS News in 2024Researchers and experts search archival records to learn about the circumstances where a fallen soldier was last seen, and investigative teams talk to surviving witnesses and examine the area for clues. Recovery teams, like the one where evidence was found at Downing's crash site in 2024, are dispatched to the area, Wright said.
Then, once everything is back in the lab, several scientists add their expertise to help make identifications. Forensic odontologists, a type of dentist, can match evidence with dental records. Tests that trace the dead person's diet are used to determine what country the soldier was from — Wright said Americans are more likely to eat a corn-based diet. Reference samples of DNA are asked from family members, which can help show a genetic match.
Evidence from Downings' accident was brought to the DPAA laboratory in June 2024. The DPAA said its scientists used anthropological analysis, multiple forms of DNA analysis, and material and circumstantial evidence to identify Downing's remains.
The DPAA said his family was given full information about his identity, although it did not specify which members were involved. According to a news clipping published after his disappearance, Downing was survived by his wife and four children, as well as his parents and four siblings. The news clipping states that Downing was reported missing just days before the couple's seventh wedding anniversary.
A rosette will be placed next to his name in missing persons courts to show he has been accounted for. He will be honored by being cremated at Arlington National Cemetery.