NEWS RELEASES from the United States Department of Defense
No. 136-06 IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Feb 14, 2006 Media Contact: (703)697-5131
Public/Industry(703)428-0711
Army MIA Soldiers from Vietnam War Identified
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO)
announced today that the remains of four U.S. servicemen, missing in action
since the Vietnam War, have been identified. They will be returned to their
families for burial with full military honors.
They are: Maj. Jack L. Barker of Waycross, Ga.; Capt. John F.
Dugan of Roselle, N.J.; Sgt. William E. Dillender of Naples, Fla.; and Pfc.
John J. Chubb of Gardena, Calif. All were from the Army's 101st Airborne
Division. Chubb will be buried in Inglewood, Calif., on Feb. 18. Barker,
Dugan and Dillender will be buried on April 12 in Arlington National Cemetery
near Washington. D.C.
On March 20, 1971, Barker and Dugan were piloting a UH-1H Huey
helicopter with Dillender and Chubb on board. The aircraft was participating
in a troop extraction mission in the Savannakhet Province of Laos. As the
helicopter approached the landing zone, it was hit by heavy enemy ground fire.
It exploded in the air and there were no survivors. Continued enemy activity
in the area prevented any recovery attempts.
A refugee in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, showed an identification tag
of Pfc. Chubb and a medallion to a U.S. interviewer in 1986. The medallion
was reportedly recovered near the same general location from an F-105 crash
site. However, the location and the aircraft type did not correlate with the
missing aircraft and soldiers.
Between 1988 and 2001, joint U.S.-Lao People's Democratic Republic
teams, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), conducted four
investigations and three excavations for these soldiers without positive
results. An investigation team surveyed three crash sites in 2002 after
interviewing local villagers from the province. The team recovered a fragment
of human tooth and some crew-related artifacts from one of the crash sites.
In October and November 2004, another joint investigation team
excavated the crash site and recovered additional human remains and
crew-related evidence. The wreckage was of a UH-1H helicopter, and contained
insignia worn by members of the 101st Airborne Division.
The remains included nine fragments of teeth that the forensic
anthropologists at JPAC were able to match with detailed information from
medical and dental records.
From the Vietnam War, 1,807 Americans are still unaccounted-for
with 364 of those from Laos. Another 839 have been accounted-for in Southeast
Asia with 208 of those from losses in Laos.
For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to
account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO Web site at
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none; text-underline:
none">
http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo [
http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo] or call (703)
699-1169.