UNDERWOOD, PAUL GERARD REMAINS RETURNED/IDENTIFIED 02/04/98
Name: Paul Gerard Underwood Rank/Branch: United States Air Force/O5/Pilot Unit: Date of Birth: 07 July 1927 Home City of Record: Hornell NY (Goldsboro NC according to obit) Date of Loss: 16 March 1966 Country of Loss: North Vietnam Loss Coordinates: Status (in 1973): Missing in Action Category: 2 Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: F105D Missions: Other Personnel in Incident:
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated 11/2004.
REMARKS:
Defense POW/MIA Weekly Update February 4, 1998
REMAINS OF U.S. SERVICEMEN FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA IDENTIFIED
The remains of two American servicemen previously unaccounted-for from Southeast Asia have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial in the United States.
They are identified as Col. Paul G. Underwood, of Goldsboro, N.C.; and Capt. Donald B. Bloodworth, of San Diego, Cal., both U.S. Air Force.
On March 16, 1966, Col. Underwood was leading a strike mission over Lai Chau Province, Vietnam. As he released his payload, he reported that his F-105 Thunderchief was on fire. Col. Underwood's wingman reported observing the F-105 crash but he saw no parachute.
In 1994 and 1995, joint U.S-Vietnamese search teams interviewed local villagers and investigated a suspected crash site believed to be that of Col. Underwood. In 1996, the crash site was excavated and human remains, pilot- related artifacts, and personal effects, including Col. Underwood's military identification tags were recovered. The remains were repatriated to the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii and identified as those belonging to Col. Underwood.
On July 24, 1970, Capt. Bloodworth and his pilot were flying an F-4D aircraft as escort on an armed, night reconnaissance mission over Laos. The pilot radioed that he had lost sight of the markers indicating the target location. That was the last contact received from the crew.
Joint U.S.-Lao teams investigated this incident twice in 1991 and 1993. In 1991, the teams surveyed the site, and in 1993, excavated a suspected crash site recovering aircraft wreckage and human remains. These remains were repatriated and subsequently identified as Capt. Bloodworth's. His crewmate is still unaccounted- for.
With the identification of these two servicemen, 2,097 Americans remain unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War.
==================
Greensboro News & Record Thursday, November 11, 2004
WOMAN LEARNS LAST WORDS OF FATHER WHO DIED IN WAR ; LT. COL. PAUL UNDERWOOD DIED FIGHTING IN HIS THIRD WAR WHILE FLYING A MISSION IN VIETNAM.
Jim Schlosser Staff Writer
Thirty-two years after her father's death, Kathy Underwood White learned his final words before his fighter jet caught fire after being hit by enemy fire. She can't prove it, but knowing her father, she's pretty certain those last words included his favorite expletive.
"That was him," White says, not with embarrassment but with pride.
Her father's story, combined with that of another career warrior, Walter "Jack" Swaney of Greensboro, is a tale of two veterans who fought three wars, World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
Paul Underwood was killed in the third. For more than three decades, his family knew only that his plane went down and he was never heard from again.
Then, in the mid-1990s, White learned more about the mission. She also discovered that the last person her father talked to was Jack Swaney, the father-in-law of her best friend, Kathy Swaney.
The two women had met in 1994, after White moved to Greensboro from California and began working in the News & Record's advertising department, where Swaney was working.
White met Kathy Swaney's husband, Jeff, Jack Swaney's son.
White and Jeff Swaney quickly realized their lives had overlapped. Swaney's father also had been an Air Force fighter pilot. After retiring from the military in 1975, he returned to his native Greensboro where he co-owned the Sports and Hobbies Store in Lawndale Shopping Center. He died in 1989.
As they compared life's notes, White and Swaney learned their fathers had been stationed in 1965 at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro.
White, about 13 at the time, and Swaney, about 10, attended different schools and don't remember ever meeting. Nor could they recall if their fathers knew each other.
White says her Dad had joined the Marines when he was about 17 and saw the tail end of World War II. He then switched to the Air Force where, without any college education, he became an officer and a pilot. He flew more than 200 combat missions during the Korean War.
He then enjoyed 13 years of peacetime service during which he and Gloria Underwood had six children.
By the time Vietnam heated up, Underwood was 38, with enough years of service to retire with a nice pension. But, Kathy White says, her father wanted to continue flying, but not as an airline pilot. Too boring.
He was pondering his future when a pilot in his unit at Seymour Johnson who was supposed to go to Vietnam didn't. Someone had to take the pilot's place. Underwood volunteered.
"I told him, "Please don't go. 'You won't come back this time,"' White recalls.
In March 1966, two months after her father's arrival in Vietnam, White came home from school "and I saw all of these black cars in the yard," she recalls.
She knew it was about her father.
The family was told that Underwood had not come back from his 22nd combat mission in Vietnam and was listed as missing in action. Twelve years would pass before the military declared him officially dead. Even after that, the family wondered if the North Vietnamese held him captive.
The matter was resolved in 1996. A search team of Vietnamese and Americans excavated a site where a U.S. warplane was reported to have crashed. The search team found human remains and dog tags with Lt. Col. Paul Underwood's name on them.
DNA testing in Hawaii confirmed the remains were Underwood's. In early 1998, Kathy White's family was notified.
It was a relief, White says. The family finally knew Underwood had gone down with his plane and hadn't died in a North Vietnamese prison cell.
Later, as White and her family prepared to go to Washington to bury Paul Underwood's remains in Arlington National Cemetery, she learned an additional detail about his death.
The information came from, of all people, Kathy Swaney.
Knowing that Kathy Swaney's husband was fascinated with the Vietnam War, Kathy White had let Jeff Swaney read the search team's report.
The report referred to an unnamed pilot who saw Underwood's plane catch fire. Underwood radioed the pilot that he was going to stay aboard and try and reach the target. The pilot later heard two distress beeps from Underwood's plane, before he saw it crash.
The episode reminded Jeff Swaney of an entry he had read years before in the diary that his father had kept of his 118 missions in Vietnam.
Jeff Swaney leafed through the diaries and found the entry, dated March 16, 1966. The entry was a mission involving four planes.
"Target was a highway bridge just east of Dien Bien Phu," Jack Swaney wrote.
"I saw No. 1 get hit and catch on fire. About the same time he said he was on fire and was going to ride as far as he could. I called him twice. ... The (plane) ... hit the ground five miles east of the target. I heard two short beeps prior to impact."
The entry listed the pilots as in the formation as: "Underwood 1, me 2, Ware 3, Hatch 4."
Swaney told his wife of this astonishing coincidence. By then, Kathy Swaney and Kathy White were working at a local ad agency.
"I went to work the next day," Kathy Swaney says, "and said, 'Kathy, you aren't going to believe this, but Jeff's father was the last person to talk to your father.' She had the most shocked look on her face. She sat down and cried."
They were happy tears. White believes fate brought Jeff and Kathy Swaney and her together.
Even though Jack Swaney didn't record Underwood's exact words, White is convinced he used his favorite, mildly profane (by today's standards) expression she heard so many times when he confronted surprise.
She's proud he stayed with the plane trying to reach the target, which she credits to the Marine left in him from World War II.
"He had the fortitude and strength to do what you have to do," White says.
In his short life, Underwood fought in three wars for his country - and for himself.
"That was his life," White says of this ultimate veteran on Veterans Day. "That was what he wanted to do."