Sun, Jul 03, 2005
Lt. Col. Darel Leetun Is Coming Home
The Department of Defense POW/MIA
Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a US
serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been
identified and are being returned to his family for burial.
He is Air Force Lt. Col. Darel D. Leetun of Hettinger, ND.
Leetun will be buried with full military honors July 8 at Arlington
National Cemetery.
On Sept. 17, 1966, Leetun led a bombing mission over Lang Son
province, North Vietnam when his F-105D 'Thunderchief' aircraft was
hit by enemy fire. Other pilots in the flight observed the aircraft
crash, but did not receive emergency beeper signals nor observe a
parachute.
Vietnamese and US specialists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting
Command (JPAC) conducted three investigations between 1991 and 1995
as they sought information on Leetun's crash site. During one of
the investigations, Vietnamese villagers led investigators to a
hillside location where human remains were found. Additional site
investigations by a Vietnam team and a JPAC team in 1999 and 2004
respectively yielded no new evidence.
JPAC scientists and Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory
specialists used mitochondrial DNA as one of the forensic tools to
help identify the remains as those of Leetun.
Of those Americans unaccounted-for from all conflicts, 1,833 are
from the Vietnam War, with 1,397 of those within the country of
Vietnam. Another 750 Americans have been accounted for in Southeast
Asia since the end of the Vietnam War. Of the Americans identified,
524 are from within Vietnam.
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