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Defense POW/MIA Accounting AgencyFulfilling Our Nation's Promise

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## News Release

# Air Force Officer MIA From Vietnam War Is Identified (Hamilton)

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 Colonel Eugene D. Hamilton of Opelika, Ala. Final arrangements for his funeralhave not been set.

On January 31, 1966, Hamilton was flying an armed reconnaissance mission over NorthVietnam when his F-105D Thunderchief was hit by enemy ground fire over the 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 Aug.-Sept. 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 name tag 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, with 599 from Vietnam.

For additional information on the Defense Department’s mission to account for missingAmericans, visit the DPMO website at http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo or call (703) 699-1169.

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