AMESBURY, HARRY ARLO, JR.
Remains retruned and Identified May 2001.
Name: Harry Arlo Amesbury, Jr.
Rank/Branch: O4/US Air Force
Unit: CCK Air Force Base, Taiwan - TDY to 345th Tacticial Airlift Squadron,
Tan Son Nhut ABSV
Date of Birth: 13 February 1932
Home City of Record: Morrison IL
Loss Date: 26 April 1972
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 113803N 1063547E (XT745866)
Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered
Category: 2
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: C130E
Refno: 1837
Other Personnel In Incident: Calvin C. Cooke; Richard E. Dunn; Donald R.
Hoskins; Richard L. Russell (all missing); Kurt F. Weisman (remains returned)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 31 April 1990 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 2001 with family contact.
REMARKS: CRASH - 1 REM RCV - N SIGN SUBJ - J
SYNOPSIS: From the CCK Air Force Base base in Taiwan, C-130 crews flew to
different locations, including Korea, Borneo, Indonesia, Japan, Africa, etc.
But most trips were to various bases in Vietnam for 3 week stays. Then the
men would return to the base in Taiwan for 3 days. On one such Vietnam tour,
one C130E had a crew consisting of Harry A. Amesbury, pilot; Richard L.
Russell, navigator, Richard E. Dunn, loadmaster, Calvin C. Cooke, Donald R.
Hoskins, and Kurt F. Weisman, crew members. This crew was TDY to 345th
Tactical Airlift Squadron at Tan Son Nhut Airbase, South Vietnam.
On April 26, 1972, Amesbury's aircraft and crew were making a night drop of
supplies to South Vietnamese forces trapped in An Loc, South Vietnam (about
65 miles from Saigon). The provincial capitol had been under seige by North
Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces off and on since early April. Supply drops
and air support were critically needed and often hampered by hostile forces
outside the city. Upon approach to the drop site at a very low level, the
aircraft was hit by enemy fire and was reported to be down. The men onboard
the aircraft were declared Missing in Action.
Supply drops were generally accomplished in one of two ways, both requiring
that the plane be airborne, and flying at very low altitudes. Using one
method, parachutes attached to the supply pallets were deployed. As the
plane flew over, the parachutes pulled the cargo from the plane. Using
another method, a hook attached to the cargo was dropped from the plane,
affixed to some firm fixture on the ground. As the plane departed the area,
the cargo was pulled out of the plane. Both required considerable skill
under the best of circumstances.
According to the Department of the Air Force, it received unspecified
information that contained evidence of death for the crew members on May 5,
1972. The status of the missing men was changed to Killed in Action/Body Not
Recovered.
In February, 1975, non-American friendly forces recovered and returned the
remains of Kurt Weisman. No information surfaced on the rest of the crew.
All onboard had been assumed killed in the downing of the plane. If this is
the case, why weren't the other remains recovered as well?
===================================
May 28, 2001
Rite to honor Vietnam War victim
Family receives pilot's remains 30 years later
               By Charles Etlinger
               The Idaho Statesman
Maj. Harry A. Amesbury Jr.'s remains were brought home to Idaho on Sunday,
nearly 30 years after he died in Vietnam when his plane was shot down on a
resupply mission.
Amesbury, of Caldwell, will be honored today in a Memorial Day ceremony at
Mountain Home Air Force Base. His ashes will be scattered Tuesday by his
family.
His family spent much of the 1990s trying to confirm his fate. At some point
today or Tuesday, "It's going to sink in as if he had just died," his son
David said.
Maj. Amesbury, who received the Silver Star for gallantry and the
Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism, was born in Iowa but has Canyon
County roots.
His grandparents homesteaded at Marsing; his parents were living in Caldwell
at the time of his death. His name is on a Caldwell monument to America's
war dead.
He bought land overlooking the Snake River near Marsing, where he intended
to retire.
"This is where he'd want to be," David Amesbury said.
Maj. Amesbury commanded a C-130E cargo plane that was downed April 26, 1972,
by heavy anti-aircraft fire near the besieged city of An Loc.
The crew was flying low at night into what a pilot of another plane
described as a sky lit up with tracer fire from everywhere as C-130s
approached and prepared to drop critical supplies for South Vietnamese
troops.
But it was not until the 1990s that remains, including several teeth, were
recovered and identified as Amesbury's.
Shortly after noon Sunday at the Boise Airport, his coffin was removed from
a Delta Airlines plane carrying passengers from Salt Lake City. A six-member
honor guard from Mountain Home AFB carried the coffin draped with an
American flag and put it into a hearse.
Waiting nearby on the tarmac were David Amesbury; his three brothers, Kurt,
Steve and Alan; David's wife, Marjan, and the couple's three children.
The honor guard then stepped away from the hearse, turned back and saluted
the coffin.
Today's ceremony at the base will include a 21-gun salute, the playing of
taps and a flyby of a C-130.
"I don't think there can be a more fitting or more appropriate way for us to
observe Memorial Day and to pay honor to someone who made the ultimate
sacrifice to the country," Lt. Col. Dean Jackson said.
It has been a long roller-coaster ride for the Amesburys, which Department
of Defense officials acknowledged last week has resulted in a change in
their policy of notifying families about found military remains.
In 1994 the U.S. military identified Maj. Amesbury's teeth, which had been
turned over by the Vietnamese the previous year. Yet in 1995, family members
were told that remains couldn't be associated with him.
That was part of what David Amesbury, an assistant Oregon state attorney
general from Albany, Ore., called a running battle between the family and
the military over identification of his father's remains.
At one point, the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery was
opened at the request of the family of another officer so remains could be
subjected to DNA testing. There was a possibility Maj. Amesbury's remains
were in the tomb. But as the Amesburys suspected then, they proved not to
be.
However, publicity over the tomb's opening helped the Amesburys break the
impasse over Maj. Amesbury's remains, David Amesbury said.
Finally, in 1998, the family was allowed to visit the remains at the
government's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii.
DNA evidence provided further proof in 1999 that the remains were those of
Maj. Amesbury.
Larry Greer, spokesman for the Department of Defense's POW-MIA office in
Virginia, said the policy in the mid-1990s was not to inform families until
gathering as much evidence about remains as possible.
Remains from several crew members were found at the C-130 crash site, and
investigators wanted to separate them, Greer said.
But he credited the Amesburys with a change in the procedure: Now, family
members are informed as evidence surfaces.
"It grew out of our experience with the Amesbury family," Greer said.
The military's lab has hundreds of remains, and there are always dozens
nearly reaching conclusive identification, Greer said. And remains are being
newly discovered from as far back as World War II.
David Amesbury, who wore his POW-MIA bracelet to the airport Sunday, has
learned more about his father's fateful last mission. Only the day before,
his C-130 was badly shot up, and an engine disabled, on a run to Cambodia
from his base in Taiwan.
On the resupply run to An Loc, the cargo planes flew low over Vietnam to
avoid enemy fire, then climbed so the loads could be dropped by parachute.
"He had just begun his climb to the drop altitude," David Amesbury said.
"The forward air controller looked away. When he looked back, he saw the
aircraft in flames going into the trees."
Shortly before then, Maj. Amesbury had been appointed chief pilot of his
squadron and could have remained safe at his base, David said.
But he said his father would have felt it was wrong to send people he was
evaluating and training on missions without flying with them.
=============================
UPDATE LINE: June 29, 2001
Thank you for calling the National League of Families Update Line.
This message is being recorded Friday, June 29th. According to the
Department of Defense, the number of Americans missing and unaccounted for
from the Vietnam War is 1,973.
On June 20th, the League was informed that six Americans were recently
accounted for. David W. Morrill and Maxim C. Parker, both USMC, were
jointly recovered in South Vietnam June 9, 1993.
The remains of Victor J. Apodaca, Jr., USAF, were repatriated April 27,
1989.
The November 14, 1991 joint recovery of the remains of Harry A. Amesbury,
Jr., USAF, brought an accepted identification.
And, the remains of Harley B. Pyles, USAF, and Winfield Wade Sisson, USMC,
were jointly recovered in South Vietnam on April 8, 1993.
The accounting for these six US personnel brings the number now missing and
unaccounted for in Vietnam to 1,481, with 417 in Laos, 67 in Cambodia and 8
in the territorial waters of the PRC.  Over 90% of the 1,973 Americans
still missing from the Vietnam War were lost in areas under Vietnam's
wartime control.