WHEELER, JAMES ATLEE
Remains Identified 10/30/2001 Announced 04/2002
Name: James Atlee Wheeler
Rank/Branch: O3/US Air Force
Unit: (unknown, per USAF)
Date of Birth: 10 February 1933
Home City of Record: Tucson AZ
Date of Loss: 18 April 1965
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 1002921N 1045451E (VX906594)
Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: A1E
Refno: 0075
Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 September 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 2002.
REMARKS: CRASH - TARGET AREA
SYNOPSIS: The Douglas A1 Skyraider ("Spad") is a highly maneuverable,
propeller driven aircraft designed as a multipurpose attack bomber or
utility aircraft. The A1 was first used by the Air Force in its Tactical Air
Command to equip the first Air Commando Group engaged in counterinsurgency
operations in South Vietnam. The aircraft was retired in the spring of 1968
and had flown in more than twenty model variations, probably more than any
other U.S. combat aircraft.
Capt. James A. Wheeler was the pilot of an A1E assigned an interdiction
mission about 10 miles south of Tinh Bien in South Vietnam on April 18,
1965. The target area, very close to the Cambodian border, was in Chau Doc
Province. During Wheeler's dive bombing attack, his aircraft was seen to
release a fragmentation bomb which detonated immediately. The aircraft dived
straight into the ground trailing fuel and smoke and exploded on impact. It
was determined that Wheeler could not have survived.
James A. Wheeler is listed among the missing because his remains were never
recovered. Others who are missing do not have such clear-cut cases. Some
were known captives; some were photographed as they were led by their
guards. Some were in radio contact with search teams, while others simply
disappeared.
Since the war ended, over 250,000 interviews have been conducted with those
who claim to know about Americans still alive in Southeast Asia, and several
million documents have been studied. U.S. Government experts cannot seem to
agree whether Americans are there alive or not. Detractors say it would be
far too politically difficult to bring the men they believe to be alive
home, and the U.S. is content to negotiate for remains.
Well over 1000 first-hand, eye-witness reports of American prisoners still
alive in Southeast Asia have been received by 1990. Most of them are still
classified. If, as the U.S. seems to believe, the men are all dead, why the
secrecy after so many years? If the men are alive, why are they not home?
=================================
havasunews 04/11/02
COMING HOME
After nearly 37 years, Arizona's first pilot lost in
South Vietnam will receive proper burial
by BRIAN WEDEMEYER
The first Arizona pilot lost in South Vietnam is finally coming home.
Capt. James A. Wheeler - honored with a park in the heart of Lake Havasu
City's downtown area - crashed April 18,1965, while flying a strike mission
over enemy targets in Chau Doc Province. Other Air Force pilots watched as
his A-1E Skyraider suddenly dived, crashed and exploded. He was 32 years
old.
Wheeler was listed as missing in action for nearly 37 years because his
remains were never recovered or identified - until recently.
His three sons - James, Ray and Stewart - have planned a trip to Hawaii in
June to pick up Wheeler's partial remains and escort them back to his
hometown of Tucson for a proper burial with full military honors.
Graveside services are scheduled for 11 a.m. June 8 at South Lawn Memorial
Park in Tucson.
"I can't wait to bring my dad home," said Ray Wheeler, 45, who works for a
concrete company in Dallas. "It helps bring closure to the whole situation."
Ray was only 8 years old when military officers arrived at the front door to
share the horrible news.
He knew something was wrong as soon as his mother, Demeris, started weeping.
"My dad was very outgoing," Wheeler said. "And he always made time for his
family."
According to documents obtained by Today's News-Herald, a joint team of
investigators from the U.S. and Socialist Republic of Vietnam traveled to An
Giang (formerly Chau Doc) Province, where they interviewed a local villager
about crash sites in the area. The villager said he visited a crash site of
a single-propeller "fighter-type" aircraft in the spring of 1965 and saw
human remains with the wreckage. The villager also said most of the wreckage
from the site had been scavenged.
When the team surveyed the location, they found no evidence of a crash.
Another joint team returned to the area in 1997 where they interviewed three
villagers, including the one from the first visit. All three identified the
A-1 as the type of aircraft involved in the crash.
The team was led to a spot close to the area surveyed three years earlier
and found small fragments of wreckage.
About a year later, another joint team excavated the crash site and
recovered human remains, wreckage and "pilot-related artifacts." The team
confirmed the site had been scavenged.
Scientists later confirmed that the artifacts found at the site were
consistent with the A-1E Skyraider and the pilot on board. Wheeler's
aircraft reportedly was the only A-1 lost within 73 kilometers of the site.
Although the small, charred bone fragments could not be identified through
DNA testing, investigators concluded the remains could only belong to
Wheeler.
After the paperwork was processed, it took several months before officials
could finally locate the Wheeler family. Most are living in the Dallas-Ft.
Worth area.
"It just about knocked us right of our chair," Ray Wheeler said.
Demeris Wheeler and two of her sons attended the 1965 dedication of Wheeler
Park, located within a large traffic circle on McCulloch Boulevard. Several
family members returned in 1995 for a rededication ceremony honoring a new
waterfall. Over the years, the park has played host to many ceremonies
honoring veterans.
========================
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/local/6_10_02wheeler.html
Taps - 37 years later
Ex-Tucsonan Capt. James A. Wheeler was shot down in '65
GARRY DUFFY
Tucson Citizen
June 10, 2002
Thirty-seven years after he died when his aircraft was shot down over South
Vietnam, Air Force Capt. James A. Wheeler has been laid to rest at home.
Wheeler was buried with military honors Saturday morning at South Lawn
Cemetery, near the neighborhood where he grew up. As more than 100 people
watched under a hot late-morning sun, A-10 aircraft from Davis-Monthan Air
Force Base staged a flyover of the grave site in honor of the fallen
warrior.
For Capt. Wheeler's widow, Demeris; his three sons, Ray, James Jr., and
Stewart; and five grandchildren he never met, the memorial service marked
the end of a quest that began almost four decades ago when enemy ground fire
downed Wheeler's A-1E Skyraider aircraft on April 18, 1965, in a fiery crash
thousands of miles from the desert he called home.
"He grew up here," Demeris Wheeler, now a Dallas resident, said after the
memorial service. "This was his home."
Capt. Wheeler almost never came back to the hometown where he was born Feb.
10, 1933, where he graduated from Tucson High School in 1950, and where he
briefly attended the University of Arizona before enlisting in the Air
Force.
He had been in South Vietnam for about two months before his final flight
and had flown 40 combat missions.
His aircraft went down after being hit over An Giang Province in South
Vietnam. Demeris Wheeler was told by her husband's wingman that the aircraft
seemingly blew up in the air after its ordnance was hit and exploded again
on impact.
Capt. Wheeler's remains were in the wreckage of his aircraft for more than
three decades. By the time an initial search of the crash site was conducted
in 1994, little remained and nothing conclusive was found. Follow-up
investigations in 1997 and 1998 turned up bone fragments and possible
remains of aircraft life-support equipment.
That's all.
But it's enough for the Wheeler family. They're convinced the Air Force's
investigation had indeed recovered remains of their loved one. The family
had moved to Dallas, however, and it took the Air Force until this year to
locate and tell them of the recovery of the remains.
Capt. Wheeler's sons went to Hawaii to accept and bring home his remains. At
Saturday's memorial service, they watched the Davis-Monthan honor guard
carry a casket containing their father's remains from a white hearse to a
grave site in a quiet, tree-shaded corner of the cemetery, next to his
parents.
A 21-gun salute, fired in three volleys by a D-M rifle unit, pierced the
still air. Four A-10 aircraft flew over low from the north, one pulling out
of formation to commemorate a fallen comrade. An American flag, tightly
folded by a member of the honor guard, was presented to the family.
An Air Force bugler, emotionally shaken or unused to the desert heat,
struggled in the playing of taps.
After the service, Demeris Wheeler said a long and trying chapter in the
family's history could be closed.
"I can't thank them enough for what they're done," she said about Air Force
authorities who look for her husband's remains.
"It's terrible to not have any remains," she said, her voice breaking
slightly. "Now I can feel a sense of closure."
The family wasn't alone in welcoming Capt. Wheeler home. Among those at the
memorial service were U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., himself a Vietnam War
veteran.
Kolbe called Capt. Wheeler "a true hero" who should serve as a model for
Americans facing the troubles of today.
Blue Air Force uniforms identified personnel assigned to Davis-Monthan who
were paying their respects.
About a dozen veterans of past wars also attended, to remember a brother
warrior they never knew.
"I'm here to honor a veteran," said Bill Aumock, a 79-year-old veteran of
the Marine Corps and World War II. "I'm here to say, 'Thank you for the
sacrifice.'"