GRAHAM, DENNIS LEE
Name: Dennis Lee Graham Rank/Branch: O3/US Air Force Unit: 428th Tactical Fighter Squadron, Tahkli AFB, Thailand Date of Birth: 11 May 1941 Home City of Record: Greenburg KS Date of Loss: 28 March 1968 Country of Loss: North Vietnam Loss Coordinates: 173200N 1062900E (VD600980) Status (in 1973): Missing In Action Category: 2 Acft/Vehicle/Ground: F111A Refno: 1107
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.
Other Personnel In Incident: Henry E. MacCann (missing)
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS: The F111 was first used in Southeast Asia in March 1968 during Operation Combat Lancer and flew nearly 3,000 missions during the war despite frequent periods of grounding. From 1968 to 1973, the F111 was grounded several months because of excess losses of aircraft. By 1969, there had been 15 F111's downed by malfunction or enemy fire. The major malfunctions involved engine problems and problems with the terrain following radar (TFR) which reads the terrain ahead and flies over any obstructions.
Eight of the F111's downed during the war were flown by crews that were captured or declared missing. The first was one of two F111's downed during Operation Combat Lancer, during which the F111 crews conducted night and all-weather attacks against targets in North Vietnam. On March 28, the F111A flown by Maj. Henry E. MacCann and Capt. Dennis L. Graham was downed near the airfield at Phu Xa, about 5 miles northwest of the city of Dong Hoi in Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam. Both MacCann and Graham were declared Missing in Action. Graham had been a graduate of Texas A & M in 1963. The crew of the second F111 downed during March 1968 was recovered.
On April 22, 1968 at about 7:30 p.m., Navy LCdr. David L. Cooley and Air Force LtCol. Edwin D. Palmgren departed the 428th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Ubon Air Base, Thailand to fly an attack mission against the Mi Le Highway Ferry over Dai Giang along Route 101. They were to pass over very heavily defended areas of Laos at rather low altitude. Although searches continued for four days, no wreckage was ever found. The loss coordinates are located near Quang Bien, in Laos, although the two men are listed as Missing in Action in North Vietnam.
As a result of the loss of the Cooley/Palmgren F111A, the Air Force suspended use of the aircraft for a limited period to investigate the cause of the losses and make any necessary modifications. After the aircraft returned to the air, the crashes resumed. When the 15th F111 went down in late 1969 because of mechanical failure, all F111's were grounded and the plane did not return to Vietnam service for several months.
In September 1972 F111A's were returned to Southeast Asia. On September 29, 1972, the F111A flown by Maj. William C. Coltman and commanded by 1Lt. Robert A. Brett, Jr. went down in North Vietnam on the Red River about 10 miles southwest of the city of Yen Bai. Inexplicably, the National League of Families published a list in 1974 that indicated that Robert A. Brett had survived the downing of his aircraft, and that the loss location was in Laos, not North Vietnam. Both men remain Missing in Action.
On October 17, 1972, Capt. James A. Hockridge and 1Lt. Allen U. Graham were flying an F111A near the city of Cho Moi in Bac Thai Province, North Vietnam, when their aircraft went down. Both men were listed as Missing in Action, until their remains were returned September 30, 1977.
On November 7, 1972, Maj. Robert M. Brown and Maj. Robert D. Morrissey flew an F111A on a mission over North Vietnam. Morrissey, on his second tour of Vietnam, was a 20 year veteran of the Air Force. The aircraft was first reported lost over North Vietnam, but loss coordinates released later indicated that the aircraft was lost in Khammouane Province, Laos near the city of Ban Phaphilang. Both Brown and Morrissey remain missing.
On November 21, 1972, the F111A flown by Capt. Ronald D. Stafford and Capt. Charles J. Caffarelli went down about halfway between Hue and Da Nang in South Vietnam. Both the pilot and backseater were thought to have died in the crash into the South China Sea, but no remains were ever found.
On December 18, 1972, LtCol. Ronald J. Ward and Maj. James R. McElvain were flying an F111 on a combat mission over North Vietnam when their aircraft was forced to ditch in the Gulf of Tonkin near the coastline at Hoanh Dong. It was suspected that these two airmen may have ejected. They remain Missing in Action.
The last missing F111A team to be shot down was Capt. Robert D. Sponeyberger and 1Lt. William W. Wilson. Sponeyberger and Wilson were flying a typical F111 tactical mission when they were hit - flying at supersonic speed only a few hundred feet altitude. They were declared Missing in Action.
In 1973, however, Sponeyberger and Wilson were released by the North Vietnamese, who had held them prisoner since the day their aircraft was shot down. Their story revealed another possibility as to why so many F111's had been lost.
Air Force officials had suspected mechanical problems, but really had no idea why the planes were lost because they fly singly and out of radio contact. Capt. Sponeyberger and 1Lt. Wilson had ruled out mechanical problems. "It seems logical that we were hit by small arms," Wilson said, "By what you would classify as a 'Golden BB' - just a lucky shot." Sponeyberger added that small arms at low level were the most feared weapons by F111 pilots. The SAM-25 used in North Vietnam was ineffective at the low altitudes flown by the F111, and anti-aircraft cannot sweep the sky fast enough to keep up with the aircraft.
That a 91,000 pound aircraft flying at supersonic speeds could be knocked out of the air by an ordinary bullet from a hand-held rifle or machine gun is a David and Goliath-type story the Vietnamese must love to tell and retell.
As reports continue to be received by the U.S.Government build a strong case for belief that hundreds of these missing Americans are still alive and in captivity, one must wonder if their retention provides yet another David and Goliath story for Vietnamese propaganda. The F111 missions were hazardous and the pilots who flew them brave and skilled. Fourteen Americans remain missing from F111 aircrafts downed in Southeast Asia. If any of them are among those said to be still missing, what must they be thinking of us?
Robert Mack Brown was appointed to the United States Air Force Academy in 1963.
====================
News & Observer, The (Raleigh, NC) May 1, 2005
Missing troops' kin seek clues John Murawski
It has been 37 years since U.S. Air Force Capt. Dennis Graham flew his last bombing mission over North Vietnam.
The 28-year-old pilot and his needle-nosed F-111A jet vanished during a nighttime raid. It's unknown whether Graham destroyed his target or the target destroyed him -- or whether he miraculously survived the crash.
"It's like the final chapter in a book," said Raleigh resident William Graham, the pilot's brother. "You'd like to know how it ends, this side of heaven."
The gnawing what-ifs brought Graham to a meeting sponsored by the Department of Defense POW/MIA Office held Saturday at the Marriott Crabtree Valley hotel. The Pentagon's POW/MIA Office sponsors 11 meetings a year around the country for families of missing vets.
About 130 relatives of missing servicemen came seeking answers Saturday from Defense Department experts and scientists. The answers are out there, encoded in fragmentary clues, the scientists said. But some clues -- dog tags and DNA-bearing bones -- are rapidly disintegrating in the acidic loam of the Asian rain forest.
Graham's brother is one of 1,835 MIAs, American soldiers missing in action from the Vietnam War that ended 30 years ago Saturday with the fall of Saigon. Forty-four of the MIAs from that war are North Carolinians.
Eleven relatives provided DNA swabs Saturday for the agency's lab to help make positive matches with a tooth, jaw bone or femur that might someday be unearthed on a one-time battlefield, in a makeshift grave or at a crash site.
"Even though we approach them as a crime scene, they're really archeological in nature," said Dr. Thomas Holland, the scientific director of the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, which handles DNA analysis and other aspects of the investigations. In 2001, the lab positively identified the remains of Lt. Fred Smith, a World War II flier from Davidson County whose remains were retrieved from the wreckage of a B-25 bomber that had crashed six decades previously on one of New Guinea's highest peaks.
William Graham, 66, has not been able to put aside his visceral need to know what happened to his kid brother that night in 1968. His father died 19 years ago, never having accepted his son's death, William Graham said. A military vet himself, Graham doesn't hold fast to the fancy that the missing fighter pilot miraculously survived in the jungle, adopted a new identity and is living anonymously somewhere in Nam.
The POW/MIA Office positively identified 58 MIAs last year and 64 in 2003. There has never been a prisoner of war discovered, said office spokesman Larry Greer. All the POWs either escaped long ago or were released as part of negotiations.
The POW/MIA recovery effort is largely driven by the relatives who keep pressure on the politicians to finance the program and negotiate with foreign governments, Graham said.
From time to time the family members' hopes are buoyed by reports of alleged sightings of an incognito American serviceman in Southeast Asia, all of them hoaxes so far.
The end of the Cold War opened new opportunities for cooperation between former enemies.
The POW/MIA Office, which has a staff exceeding 600, has been searching for remains of soldiers in communist North Korea for the past decade, Greer said. The forensic specialists and anthropologists do their work under a North Korean security escort. They have brought back remains of 200 fallen soldiers and identified 25 of them.
"The goal is to account for the individual, to find him and return him to his family," Greer said. "The honors rendered at burial are to honor his sacrifice."