ADAMS, LEE AARON
ADAMS, LEE AARON Remains Returned, ID Announced 05/31/2005
Name: Lee Aaron Adams Rank/Branch: O2/US Air Force Unit: (unknown) Date of Birth: 29 July 1938 Home City of Record: Willits CA Date of Loss: 19 April 1966 Country of Loss: North Vietnam Loss Coordinates: 173600N 1062157E (XE449463) Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered Category: 2 Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: F105D Other Personnel In Incident: none Refno: 0307
REMARKS:
Source: Compiled from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK in 2005.
SYNOPSIS: Larry Adams loved to fly. His classmates at the Air Force Academy wrote upon his graduation in 1963, "flying is his first love and his last, and he is in his glory only with stick in hand and throttle forward."
After he left the Academy, Larry trained on the "Thud", the Republic F105 Thunderchief, which he flew in Vietnam. The F105D is credited with making more strikes against North Vietnam than any other U.S. aircraft, but also took more losses. The F105 was constantly being modified to meet changing combat needs. A specially modified version of the F105 was the backbone of the Wild Weasel program, initiated in 1965 to improve the U.S. Air Force's electronic warfare capability.
On April 19, 1966, Adams was flying a bombing mission in an F105D over Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam, about 20 miles southwest of the city of Quang Khe. His aircraft was observed to crash with no ejection seen and no emergency beeper signals heard. The Air Force established sufficient evidence that Lt. Adams died at the time of the crash, but that there was a good chance the Vietnamese knew his fate.
Not really unexpectedly, Larry was not among the 591 Americans released from enemy prisons at the end of the war. He may not be among the hundreds of Americans experts believe to still be alive, held in Southeast Asia. But one can imagine he would cheerfully fly one last mission, "with stick in hand and throttle forward" to bring his comrades home.
Lee Aaron Adams graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1963.
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Department of Defense No. 536-05 IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 31, 2005
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Vietnam War Missing In Action Serviceman Identified
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and are being returned to his family for burial.
He is Air Force 1st Lt. Lee A. "Larry" Adams of Willits, Calif. A memorial service with full military honors will be held at Beale Air Force Base, Calif. on June 1, and he will be buried in Willits at a later date.
On April 19, 1966, Adams was attacking enemy targets in Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam, when he rolled his F-105 "Thunderchief" in on the target. As other pilots in the flight watched, his plane failed to pull out of the dive, crashed and exploded.
U.S. specialists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) conducted a number of investigations as they sought information on Adams's loss. In September 1993, joint U.S.-Vietnamese team members interviewed three villagers who said they witnessed the shootdown in 1966. They led the team to a supposed crash site, but no aircraft debris or human remains were found. Another informant turned over a skeletal fragment he had found near the site of the crash.
In October 1994 another joint team interviewed two other Vietnamese citizens who recalled the shootdown and the burial of the remains of a pilot nearby. A third team re-interviewed four Vietnamese in 1998 who had supplied information earlier.
Then in November 2004, a joint team excavated the suspected burial and crash sites, but found neither aircraft debris nor other material evidence. However, a villager living nearby gave the team a fragment of a wristwatch and a signal mirror he claimed to have recovered from the crash site. The wristwatch and mirror are consistent with items issued to, or used by, U.S. military aviators in the mid-1960s.
Scientists of the JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used mitochondrial DNA as one of the forensic tools to identify the remains as those of Adams.
Of the 88,000 Americans missing in action 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 war. Of the Americans identified, 524 are from within Vietnam.
For additional information on the Defense Department's mission to account for missing Americans, visit the DPMO Web site at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.
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39 YEARS LATER, FARMER HELPS BRING PILOT'S REMAINS HOME; MILITARY: L.B. NATIVE LARRY ADAMS' PLANE HAD BEEN SHOT DOWN DURING VIETNAM WAR IN 1966.
Karen Robes Staff writer
On Wednesday, John L. Adams finally fulfilled a promise he made to his mother before she died: If you ever find your brother, Larry, please bring him home.
U.S. Air Force First Lt. Lee "Larry" Adams was deemed missing in action after enemy forces apparently gunned down the Long Beach native's F-105D Thunderchief in North Vietnam in 1966.
Over an 11-year span, villagers at the crash site were interviewed and pieces of a soldier's belongings were recovered. Locating his remains seemed impossible until one of the villagers, a farmer and North Vietnamese militia man who had undermined his supervisor's orders to display the body as a war trophy years ago, led military officials to the 39-year-old remains of Larry Adams. DNA testing further linked the body parts to the soldier.
Those remains were released Wednesday to John Adams, who traveled to Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Oahu, Hawaii, to bring home the beloved uncle and brother who had been lost for nearly 40 years.
Larry was born on July 29, 1938, in Long Beach to Clive and Jessie Adams, who moved from Idaho to attend college in California. His parents both taught in the Long Beach Unified School District.
The family moved in 1942 to a ranch in Willits, where the 6foot-4, 220-pound Larry excelled in academics and sports, especially football and basketball. He became licensed to fly while he was still in high school.
After high school, he was offered a number of college scholarships, but turned them down to pursue his love of flying. He entered the U.S. Air Force Academy, where he finished four years of academics and a fifth year of advanced flight. President John F. Kennedy spoke at his graduation.
The U.S. Air Force officer never married or had children; he was focused on his career. He considered his nieces and nephews his own, taking them on rides in his convertible and playing games with them when he was home.
"He was our hero, the dashing pilot who traveled around the world and told us stories of what he did," said Pastor Steven Adams, his nephew.
Larry enlisted on June 5, 1965, and was deployed to Vietnam. How he died was a mystery, but fellow pilots wrote to the family that Larry's plane went down in the Quang Binh province. His remains were not found.
Steven recalled the day he found out his uncle died and the way his mother cried.
"He had just spent Christmas with us," Steven said. "The last real outing we had with him before he went to Vietnam was watching `Dr. Zhivago.' To this day, my mother can't watch it."
A long search
"Until they are home" is the motto of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, tasked with locating all missing American soldiers. Currently, there are more than 1,800 missing from the Vietnam War, said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon's POW/MIA office.
The search for Larry Adams' remains began in 1993, when investigators traveled to the site of the crash. In the years before 2004, they recovered fragments that belonged to the soldier: part of a wristwatch, a small pocket mirror to signal for help.
A handful of villagers also were interviewed, including a farmer who owned the land.
The farmer had been a member of the North Vietnamese militia. After the crash, he was told by his superior to bring Larry Adams' remains to the village to be displayed as a war trophy.
But the man disobeyed orders and took care of the soldier's remains, lighting incense and praying to them.
The farmer led investigators to the soldier's bones, which were sent to Hawaii for mitochondrial DNA analysis, a tool used in more than 75 percent of all identification cases.
"They were consistent to his stature and gender and the DNA matched his brother's," Greer said.
On April 19 -- 39 years to the day Larry was killed -- military officials gathered at the Sacramento home of nephew John D. Adams to give the family a full report of Larry's death.
"We treated it as if he died that day," John D. Adams said.
"I feel a great debt to this North Vietnamese farmer and his great act of compassion on our behalf," Steven Adams said.
On Wednesday, Larry will come home in grand military fashion. Before he is buried in a family plot in Willits, he will be honored with a gun salute at Beale Air Force Base in Northern California, about 40 miles north of Sacramento. Planes will fly in the Lost Man formation, one of them pulling away to signify a lost member. Military honors will precede the burial of U.S. Air Force First Lt. Lee ``Larry'' Adams in a family plot in Willits 39 years after his death over North Vietnam in 1966. DNA testing links the missing flier to remains long guarded by a North Vietnamese farmer.