STEVENS, PHILLIP PAUL
Remains identified 12/20/02

Name: Phillip Paul Stevens
Rank/Branch: O2/US Navy
Unit: Observation Squadron 67
Date of Birth: 26 July 1942
Home City of Record: Twin Lake MI
Date of Loss: 11 January 1968
Country of Loss: Laos
Loss Coordinates: 171800N 1055258E (WE938123)
Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered
Category: 3
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: OP2E
Refno: 0982

Other Personnel In Incident: Denis Anderson; Richard Mancini; Delbert Olson;
Michael Roberts; Gale Siow; Arthur C. Buck; Donald Thoresen, Kenneth Widon
(all missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 15 March 1990 with the assistance
of 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 2002.

REMARKS: CRASH CNFM - WE 938123 - NO SERCH -J

SYNOPSIS: The Lockheed P2 "Neptune" was originally designed for submarine
searching, using magnetic detection gear or accoustic buoys. Besides flying
maritime reconnaissance, the aircraft served as an experimental night attack
craft in the attempt to interdict the movement of enemy truck convoys.
Another model, the OP2E, dropped electronic sensors to detect truck
movements along the supply route through Laos known as the "Ho Chi Minh
Trail".

The Ho Chi Minh Trail was used by the North Vietnamese for transporting
weapons, supplies and troops. Hundreds of American pilots were shot down
trying to stop this communist traffic to South Vietnam. Fortunately, search
and rescue teams in Vietnam were extremely successful and the recovery rate
was high.

Still there were nearly 600 who were not rescued. Many of them went down
along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the passes through the border mountains
between Laos and Vietnam. Many were alive on the ground and in radio contact
with search and rescue and other planes; some were known to have been
captured. Hanoi's communist allies in Laos, the Pathet Lao, publicly spoke
of American prisoners they held, but when peace agreements were negotiated,
Laos was not included, and not a single American was released that had been
held in Laos.

Delbert Olson was the pilot of an OP2E electronic observation aircraft
assigned to Observation Squadron 67 at Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. On January
11, 1968, he and a crew of eight, including Denis Anderson, were dispatched
on an armed reconnaissance mission over Laos. The aircraft lost radio and
radar contact at 9:57 a.m. When the plane failed to return within a
reasonable time, an extensive visual, electronic and photographic search was
conducted in the area of the aircraft's last known position.

On January 23, a USAF A1 located a suspected crash site. On January 25th an
O2 from the 23rd Tactical Air Support Squadron photographed the site. Using
the photographs for photo interpretation, and in conjunction with visual air
reconnaissance of the site, it was determined that the wreckage was that of
Commander Olson's aircraft. The aircraft crashed on the northern side of a
sheer cliff, 150 feet below the 4583 foot summit line, about 15 kilometers
northeast of Ban Nalouangnua, Khammouane Province, Laos. It was decided that
all indications were that there were no survivors and most probably no
identifiable remains. Because of the heavy jungle canopy, irregular terrain
and the close proximity of enemy forces, no ground team was inserted to
inspect the crash site for remains. There was no indication as to the exact
cause of the crash.

All members of the crew were placed in an initial casualty status of Missing
In Action. On February 23, 1968, the crew was placed in a casualty status of
Presumed Killed in Action/Body Not Recovered.

The crew of the OP2E lost on January 11, 1968 are among nearly 600 Americans
lost in Laos. Because Laos was not a party to the agreements ending the war,
no Americans held by Laos were ever released. Since the war ended, nearly
10,000 reports have convinced many experts that hundreds of Americans are
still being held captive in Southeast Asia. While the crew of the OP2E may
not be among them, one can imagine them proudly flying one more mission to
bring home the evidence needed to bring them to freedom.

=====================================

Family hopes for recovery of soldier's remains

Sunday, November 11, 2001

By Susan K. Treutler
  CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER

On May 27, 1968, Mildred and Paul Stevens of Twin Lake went to East Dalton
Oakhill Cemetery and bought three grave sites.

Paul Stevens was buried there in 1980.

Mildred was buried beside him last June.

But the grave they bought for their son, Philip, remains empty even though
he's been gone as of today 33 years and 10 months.

Philip Stevens' resting place since his Jan. 11, 1968, death has been a
mountaintop in Laos.

Now, there is finally hope that the U.S. Navy aviator who died in the
Vietnam War will be laid to rest next to his mother, who wanted him returned
to the nation whose uniform he so proudly wore.

A highly specialized search team in March combed the ledges of Phoulouang
Mountain where Stevens and the other eight members on his flight crew
crashed and retrieved some remains. The site, because of its remoteness and
ruggedness, had not been disturbed. The team is to return to Laos in
February when the weather is favorable for further searches, according to
Lt. Jerry O'Hara of the U.S. Navy's Killed In Action Body Recovery team in
Honolulu.

The recovery is undertaken by the military's Joint Task Force-Full
Accounting Office, which since its formation in 1992 has embarked on about
600 searches and digs looking for lost soldiers, sailors, airmen and
Marines. The effort restricted to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia includes the
expertise of archaeologists, forensic and mortuary specialists, and
linguists operating on $100 million annual budgets.

So far, the remains of 500 soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines have been
found. Most have been identified.

It takes up to a year to identify the remains, O'Hara said. It is not yet
known if Stevens' remains were among those already taken off the Lao
mountain.

Stevens' sister, Joy Warren, of White Lake, northwest of Detroit, said
searchers have recovered her brother's "dog tags" and sent pictures of the
site to family members showing airplane parts and personal effects of the
crew on ledges.

She and her brother, Richard Stevens of Commerce Township, also near
Detroit, a few years ago gave blood in an effort to match DNA with remains
and identify them. She said they have heard nothing from the military since.

The crash site was identified in 1996, but was determined to be far too
dangerous to search. Family members of the crew applied pressure and the
search was finally undertaken. Some of the remains, however, are on narrow
mountain ledges that cannot be reached.

The search has been extremely dangerous, as are many such missions. Last
March, five U.S. servicemen died while on an advance mission to prepare for
a search. The Russian-made helicopter they were in crashed 280 miles south
of Hanoi . Also killed were 11 Vietnamese men the helicopter crew ferrying
the Americans and members of the Vietnamese Office Seeking Missing Persons.

In an odd twist of fate, the team looking for Stevens and the others on the
Lao mountain suspended their search to help recover their fellow searchers'
bodies.

Despite the shortened search, the team did recover some bones and other
artifacts.

The finds put to rest any wondering about exactly where the crew went down
and gave some promise that remains of at least some of the crew would be
brought home.

Too late to ease mother's pain

Philip Paul Stevens is among 63 soldiers and sailors from Michigan, and
nearly 2,000 nationwide, still listed as missing in Southeast Asia some as
long as 36 years.

So many parents are still waiting. So many have died wondering.

Mildred Stevens was 92 when she died in June. She lived just long enough to
know that Philip might one day be buried on U.S. soil.

She always wanted more information on what happened to her youngest child.
She was told that a crash location and some remains were discovered. But in
the end, as age took its toll, family members did not show her pictures from
the site showing boots, pieces of uniforms and other evidence of the crash.

"My mother kept up with the correspondence that came from the government,"
said her older son, Richard, who now lives in the Detroit area. "She knew
they were searching. She was happy that they were actually looking for him.

"It's too bad my mother didn't live long enough to see them find him."

A secret mission

The Stevens lived first in Dalton Township as Philip was growing up, moving
to North Muskegon when he was 8 so the children could be close to school and
take part in athletics and other activities.

Young Philip was interested in science and astronomy and was good at
electronics. He graduated from North Muskegon High School in 1960, and went
on to the University of Minnesota, earning an electrical engineering degree
on a Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship.

After college, he was trained as a pilot by the Navy, and earned his "wings"
in 1967. He held ratings as a private, commercial, instrument and
multiengine pilot and had logged more than 400 hours of flight time.

Stevens was a 25-year-old lieutenant junior grade when he and the other
eight members of Observation Squadron 67's Crew 2 were shot down over Laos,
about 20 miles from Vietnam.

Information on the top secret mission was not declassified and made public
until 1998. But there was little mystery about the mission's fate. Unlike
many such crashes, there were eyewitnesses.

A.G. Alexander, now a retired Navy commander, was on another airplane on the
same mission, flying in tandem with Crew 2's Neptune OP-2E aircraft.

They were flying low, zigzagging just above the treetops over the Ho Chi
Minh Trail a supply route, much of it just a narrow walking path, used by
the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese to move soldiers and materiel through the
rugged Southeast Asian countryside.

As the Navy personnel flew, they dropped 3-foot-long, cylindrical sound and
motion sensors, which were suspended from small parachutes. The chutes would
catch in the trees over the trail, allowing the U.S. to track the enemy via
sensors hidden deep in the foliage. It was the only way to detect them. The
heavy canopy of trees did not allow visual tracking, so the U.S. had to be
able to hear traffic below.

"All the information gathered would go to a large plane circling at 25,000
feet and then be collected at a computer center in Thailand," said
Alexander, now of Whitefish, Mont.

"Our troops would know exactly where the sounds were coming from," Alexander
said. "We could then come in with an attack airplane or a B-52 and really do
a job on them. We stopped the North Vietnamese Army 40,000 troops like that
at Khesanh."

Because of their low altitude, the flights were extremely dangerous. Stevens
and the others, who were based in Thailand, volunteered for the duty.

Alexander said it is not known exactly what happened to Stevens' plane, but
the pilot or navigator radioed: "I am going down through a hole in the
clouds."

Then silence.

"Immediately, we knew," said Alexander. "We didn't hear another word.

"We stayed around and looked around for another hole in the clouds and
couldn't find one. With all that cloud cover, we knew that a gunner would be
looking at that hole waiting for anyone to come down through and shoot the
hell out of them," Alexander said.

When last seen, Stevens the crew's bombardier was in the glass nose of the
airplane, crouched over the plane's bombsight.

Families left in the dark

The mission Stevens was on was largely kept secret because the U.S.
government had denied it was fighting in Laos.

A month after Stevens died, his family was informed that his plane went down
due to hostility or mechanical problems. No other details were offered. It
was 30 years before the family learned from the Navy why he was flying over
Laos.

On March 9, 1968, his parents held a funeral for him at St. Mary's of the
Woods Catholic Church. There was an empty casket there, its presence
offering comfort while symbolic of all that was lost.

Alexander lost not only fellow servicemen in the crash, he lost his best
friend, Delbert Olson, 42, the Crew 2's pilot.

"We flew three squadrons together. We chased girls together. We both
married, had children the same age. We were very good friends," Alexander
said.

With all that history, Alexander over the years became the chronicler of the
mission.

He spent a year finding family members of the lost crew. Many of Crew 2's
families are corresponding and gathering information on those killed in
action who remain missing.

One of the most active is David Olson, son of the Crew 2 pilot, who would
like to see the crew eventually buried in Arlington National Ceremony, the
way they flew together, died together, and have rested together all these
years.

Joy Warren said no decision has been made on where Philip will eventually be
laid to a final rest.

Meanwhile, family members do what they are used to doing. They wait.

===================
03/2002

CAMP H.M. SMITH, Hawaii (NNS) -- On a January morning in 1968, a Navy
commander, three lieutenants junior grade, four petty officers second class
and a petty officer third class climbed aboard their OP-2E Neptune aircraft
and prepared for take-off. They would not live to see the sunset that day.

The nine Sailors were members of Observation Squadron (VO) 67, a squadron
that operated secretly out of an airbase in Thailand during the Vietnam War.
Their mission was to pepper the jungles of Laos with tiny sensors so
sensitive they could be used to detect slight movements, or listen in on
conversations. The sensors would be used to collect intelligence.

That January morning, three planes left the airstrip in Thailand with the
same mission, but only two safely returned to the airfield. It was reported
by another pilot that the last words of third aircraft's mission commander
were simply, "I'm going down through this hole in the clouds."

What happened next is still a mystery. Whether they came under enemy fire or
had a piece of navigation equipment malfunction is anyone's guess. What is
known is that their plane went down on the side of a cloud-covered mountain
in Laos, nearly a mile above the jungle floor, and for more than 30 years
they lay untouched -- until now.

Thirty-four years later, Aircrew Survival Equipmentman 1st Class (AW)
Nicholas Williams and Chief Hospital Corpsman (FMF) Paula Africa are
searching for their fallen shipmates. The two are strapped in and nearly
dangling at times from the side of a mountain, only 100 feet from the
summit. They systematically search through grids on a 35-degree mud and
rock-filled slope.

"This is an outstanding mission," Williams said as he passes buckets of dirt
and chunks of aircraft wreckage to Africa. Williams is permanently assigned
to Aircraft Intermediate Maintenance Detachment, Naval Air Station Whidbey
Island, Wash., and volunteered to work as a life support technician
augmentee with Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA) based in Hawaii.

The Bagley, Wis., native said he gladly volunteered, but wasn't sure if he
could join the recovery teams that search for missing-in-action (MIA) 10
times each year in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. "My senior chief could only
pick two of us to go out on this mission," the 16-year Navy veteran recalls,
"and I was lucky enough to be selected."

The mountain was initially deemed too dangerous to attempt to excavate in
1996 when an investigation team located the crash site; but with the help of
Army mountaineers, they decided it could be done. Last year, the crash site
was excavated for the very first time; remains were repatriated and are in
the identification process. This time around, it is fresh dirt, undisturbed
remains and new pieces of the puzzle.

Williams and Africa are no strangers to the POW/MIA search-and-recovery
efforts in Southeast Asia.

"I've done one mission in Vietnam and this is my second in Laos," said
Africa. The Keuka Park, N.Y., native confesses, this mission is the most
rewarding yet. "This is my third mission overall, but its the first time
we've found remains at a site that I've been at. It's just so exciting
because you know it may bring closure to a family that's been waiting for
answers for a very long time," the chief said while taking a break from the
bucket line.

Africa is assigned as a team medic at the U.S. Army Central Identification
Laboratory in Hawaii. The lab works very closely with JTF-FA and is
responsible for positively identifying remains, either through dental
records or coordinating mitochondrial DNA testing, if the bone fragment is
large enough for the DNA-testing process.

While the team lives in a makeshift base camp on the mountain and hikes
roughly 45 minutes up to the excavation site every day, their spirits remain
high. It's the second time this site has been excavated, and this trip alone
has been a huge success.

Some of the possible remains they've found are piece of a mandible with
teeth still attached, several individual teeth, other pieces of osseous
material and the largest piece, possibly a tibia. Teeth are considered the
most sought after, because according to the anthropologists, they provide
the best chance of making a positive identification.

Some of the most powerful material to hold and touch are items from their
era. Some of the things the team recovered during this trip include wrist
watches, a .38 caliber pistol, General Motors car keys, a 35mm camera,
coins, a charred and slightly mangled pewter second class crow from a
Sailors utility cover and dog tags.

To the Sailors working on the mountain, this particular site carries a lot
of meaning and emotions. "Every mission is important," the chief insists,
"but this mission -- searching for Sailors -- it's definitely extra special
to me."

Today, there are still 399 Sailors and 242 Marines who haven't come home
from the war in Southeast Asia.

================

Remains of Crew in Navy Plane Crash ID'd

The Associated Press Friday, December 20, 2002; 8:55 AM

HONOLULU - The remains of all nine crew members aboard a U.S. Navy patrol
plane that crashed in Laos during the Vietnam War have been identified, the
Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii, announced Thursday.

The OP-2E Neptune crashed into the cloud-covered face of Phou Louang
Mountain on Jan. 11, 1968, according to officials at Honolulu-based Joint
Task Force-Full Accounting.

The crew was on a mission to drop sensors along the jungle floor to detect
enemy troop movements and conversations.

Excavations began in 1996 after the crash site was located near the
mile-high mountain summit, and the work was completed last February, the
officials said.

Since 1973, the remains of 750 American service members formerly listed as
missing or unaccounted for in Southeast Asia have been identified. There are
currently 1,891 Americans still missing or unaccounted for.

 2002 The Associated Press