Air Force Officer MIA from Vietnam War is 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 will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors.
He is Col. Eugene D. Hamilton
of Opelika, Ala.
Final arrangements for his funeral have not been set.
On Jan. 31, 1966, Hamilton was flying an armed reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam when his F-105D ‘Thunderchief’ was hit by enemy ground fire over Ha Tinh province. His mission was part of a larger operation, known as Operation Rolling Thunder, which attacked air defense systems and the flow of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Airborne searches for his crash site that day were unsuccessful. A radio broadcast from Hanoi reported an F-105 had been shot down but did not provide any details.
Between July 1993 and November 2000, joint U.S.-Vietnam teams, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), conducted four investigations and one excavation searching for the pilot and his plane.
An investigation team in March 2000 learned from a Vietnamese villager that an area excavated in 1997 was not the location of the pilot’s burial. A second location was then excavated in August and September 2000, which did yield aircraft wreckage, personal effects and human remains.
In 2004, three Vietnamese citizens turned over to a JPAC team remains they had found at the same crash site a year earlier.
In late May 2005, the JPAC team recovered fragments of possible human remains and life support equipment from the 2000 crash site. Personal effects found there also included a leather nametag with the name “HAMILTON” partially visible on it.
JPAC scientists and Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory specialists used mitochondrial DNA as one of the forensic tools to help identify the remains. Laboratory analysis of dental remains also confirmed his identity.
Of those Americans unaccounted-for from all conflicts, 1,807 are from the Vietnam War, with 1,382 of those within the country of Vietnam. Another 839 Americans have been accounted-for in Southeast Asia since the end of the war, with 599 from Vietnam.
What is JPAC?
Mission and History The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), located on the island of Oahu in Hawaii, was activated on Oct. 1, 2003. JPAC’s mission is to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all Americans missing as a result of our nation’s previous conflicts. Our highest priority is the return of any living Americans that remain prisoners of war.
JPAC was created from the merger of the 30 year old U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii, and the 11 year old Joint Task Force – Full Accounting. This 425-person organization, commanded by a flag officer, is committed and dedicated to bringing home the nation’s service members and civilians who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Worldwide Mission
The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command’s (JPAC) mission is to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all Americans missing as a result of the nation’s past conflicts. JPAC personnel search for, recover and identify remains of Americans unaccounted-for from the Persian Gulf War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Korean War and World War II. JPAC also performs other humanitarian missions as directed.
World War II recovery operations typically consist of teams deploying to such places as Europe, Papua New Guinea, China, the Pacific Islands, and many other locations where American service members are still missing. There are more than 78,000 American service members unaccounted for from World War II. Since 1973, the JPAC has identified and returned to their families more than 1,170 American servicemen formerly listed as unaccounted for from previous wars.

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