Newfound Tech Finds Lost Vietnam War Navigator-- Part 3: A 'Fireball'

 

The mission to find Major Paul A. Avolese's B-52 bomber was the first time that the defense agency had allowed a nongovernmental partner to conduct work in Vietnam.

Paul Avoles3 was born June 12, 1932 and was from New York.  he served in the Air Force's 4133rd Bomb Wing in Vietnam.

On July 7, 1967, he an his crew were flying from a U.S. base on Guam Island alongside other B-52s to bomb a target in South Vietnam.  As two of the bombers maneuvered into place about 65 miles southeast of what was then Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital, they collided, igniting a "fireball."

Eight days after the crash, Col. Mitchell Cobeaga of the Air Force notified Avoles's parents in a letter that the exact cause of the explosion was unknown.

Avolese, who was 35 at the time, was declared dead a few days afterwards.  The U.S. government later classified his remains, as well as those of five others missing, as "nonrecoverable."

The Fall of Saigon Was 40 Years Ago Today

But, as Charlie Daniels would sing, "Still in Saigon."

From the April 30, 2015, "40 Years Later: The Fall of Saigon" by AP.

I can still remember seeing the crowds trying to get to those helicopters.

"Forty years later, the images remain searing.  Throngs of desperate South Vietnamese civilians trying to scale the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, hoping to squeeze aboard one of the helicopters evacuating U.S. personnel and their associates in the face of the onslaught by North Vietnamese forces.

"U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin, in fear of spreading panic, had delayed launching the evacuation until the last opportunity.  As a result, potentially better plans for transport planes or cargo ships were scrapped -- and the helicopters, with space for fewer refugees, were called on April 29, 1975.

By late afternoon, perhaps 10,000 desperate Vietnamese had converged on the embassy."

And, I never thought it would happen.