More Than 50 Years Later, MIA US Pilot Is Now Accounted For

A US war pilot will finally receive a proper burial more than 50 years after he was killed during a Vietnam War spy mission. The move was made possible by the 2018 discovery of the remains of US Navy Reserve Lt. Cmdr. Larry R. Kilpatrick, who disappeared in June 1972, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced Tuesday, per CBS News. The 28-year-old from Stone Mountain, Georgia, had been flying a light attack aircraft, an A-7A Corsair II, when he took off from the USS Saratoga aircraft carrier off Vietnam's northern coast for a "night armed reconnaissance mission," the DPAA says. He radioed his wingman to say he intended to attack a target outside Ha Tinh City, but was never heard from again.

The following morning, the remains of a parachute were seen near Kilpatrick's last known location. Though there was no sign of his plane, a radio station run by the North Vietnamese Army claimed an A-7 had been shot down on June 18 and Kilpatrick's A-7A was the only such plane to go missing around that time. Confirmation came in 1996, when aircraft wreckage consistent with an A-7 was discovered during an excavation of a site near Kilpatrick's last known location. More excavations were carried out over the years, eventually leading to the discovery of possible human remains.

Processed at a DPAA laboratory in 2018, the remains were linked to Kilpatrick through dental analysis and circumstantial evidence recovered from the scene, CBS reports. The pilot is now to receive a proper burial in Gwinnett County, Georgia, on Nov. 15, the agency says. A rosette will also be placed next to Kilpatrick's name at the American Battle Monuments Commission's Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, to reflect the change of status to "accounted-for," the DPAA says. (More Vietnam War stories.)