Click image for larger photo. The last confirmed sighting of Kassell Monford Keene occurred when he bailed out of a B-29, after a Soviet MiG shot the bomber down over North Korea. But Keene's former crewmate, Walter Stoll, and his stepson, Sheldon Olson, are on a crusade to find out what happened to the missing pilot from Seal Beach. I'm not going to let it die. Fifty years after the Korean War began, questions of this far-away conflict remain unanswered and, perhaps, unanswerable.
Military officials bridle at accusations they are hiding something.
We have a personal commitment to this cause, because some of the guys we served with are either dead or missing. At least 21 American POWs defected to the communists, and hundreds of others signed documents critical of the United States. Countless documents remain classified. He received an Order of the Red Star medal from the Soviet Union for ferrying planes from Iran to Russia. After the war, Keene attended law school but quit before earning a degree.