http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/email/news/14074616.htm
Posted on Sat, Mar. 11, 2006
Family persists in search of captain
By John Simerman
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Jeff Kruger can't forget the leaden sky above
Lakenheath, England, how it squatted low over Sussex that day 20 years
ago and magnified the thunder of the F-111s as they screamed past in a
diamond formation, minus one -- for the "missing man."
How it fed the sorrow.
"My heart was vibrating from the noise and the percussion,"
said the 39-year-old Antioch man. "Everybody just lost it."
The flyby honored the two-man crew of an F-111F fighter jet that went
down in the early dark of April 15, 1986, off the coast of Tripoli,
Libya. Two dozen F-111s flew from Lakenheath Air Base for a bombing raid
on Libya that President Reagan ordered to strike back for a terrorist
blast at a West Berlin disco that injured 200 people, including 63 U.S.
soldiers, and killed two.
All but one jet returned safely. Aboard the lost plane, Karma-52, were
the pilot, Air Force Maj. Fernando Ribas-Dominicci, and Kruger's older
stepbrother, Capt. Paul F. Lorence.
Lorence, a quiet, 31-year-old weapons system officer, graduated from
Skyline High School in Oakland with dreams of flying an F-111. With the
crash, he left behind a wife and baby son in England.
Twenty years later, Lorence remains the missing man. And Kruger, a
retired Richmond police officer, is searching for answers, hoping to
find Lorence's bones and bring them home.
"I think there's a very reasonable chance his remains were
recovered and are still there to this day, and they're using it as some
kind of bargaining chip," said Kruger, a private investigator in
Martinez.
Operation El Dorado Canyon was the longest fighter combat mission in
military aviation history, and an early U.S. military response to
modern-day terrorism. Now, as its 20th anniversary nears, it's a blip on
the radar of American military history, in part because of its limited
success.
Only four jets hit their targets; one of the bombs fell in a civilian
area near the French Embassy in Tripoli. If a key U.S. goal was to kill
Libya's mercurial leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi, it went unmet. Instead,
Gadhafi's 15-month-old adopted daughter was killed.
"I don't think it was anything people bragged about because the
results were so paltry, and sort of gruesome," said Jerry Combs, a
history professor at San Francisco State University.
Lorence attended San Francisco State before he became an Air Force
officer. A history scholarship there bears his name. Combs said he
recalled Lorence as "the last person in the world you'd think of as
a militarist. He was a very gentle sort of fellow, not the kind of
person you'd say was a warrior."
But Lorence aimed for the Air Force, and would build models of the
F-111, known as the Aardvark. He first was a nuclear weapons specialist
in stateside silos, then moved to England. Without the eyesight to
become a pilot, he took the next seat.
"The F-111 was his dream plane," said Kruger. "If he was
going to go down in anything, he wanted to go down in an F-111."
Three years after the raid, defense officials told the family that Libya
was turning over Lorence's remains, but they were wrong. The remains
that washed up on Libyan shores three weeks after the raid belonged to
Ribas-Dominicci, the pilot.
Seventeen years later, some clues give Kruger hope.
An autopsy found that Ribas-Dominicci was alive and suffered only a
broken heel bone on impact, then drowned. That suggested that he and
Lorence managed to eject in the plane's escape pod before Karma-52 hit
water.
Kruger said he and others recall television footage of Libyans holding
what appeared to be the helmets of U.S. fighter pilots, one with the
name "Lorence" on it.
And there was the man who, in a 1995 book, claimed to have visited Libya
and seen the wreckage of Karma-52 and the engraved names of Lorence and
Ribas-Dominicci on their flight suits and helmets. Kruger has been
unable to locate that author.
Until lately, Kruger and his family knew little about Pentagon steps to
learn more. As it turns out, those steps were few until late 2003.
That's when arctic relations with Libya briefly thawed, after Libya
agreed to give up its nuclear weapons program in exchange for the
lifting of economic sanctions.
Two months ago, the Pentagon office in charge of missing personnel and
prisoners of war gave Kruger a report that details a 2004 trip to Libya
in which an American team met with government officials and some people
who saw the crash and the recovery of the pilot's remains.
The air crews were silent during the raid to keep the Libyans off guard,
so no one knew exactly what happened to Karma-52 before it speared the
Mediterranean Sea less than two minutes before Lorence could unload its
2,000-pound bombs on the el-Azziziya barracks. The barracks were the
center of power for Gadhafi, and one of three targets for crews of the
48th Tactical Fighter Wing.
As one of the last in a line of nine F-111s aiming for the barracks at
more than 600 mph, Karma-52 was in a precarious spot -- with Libyan
defenses fully alerted. Libyan radar had locked on the jet that flew in
before Karma-52, said retired Air Force Col. Robert Venkus, who was the
wing's second-in-command.
Along with the fireball seen in the sky, that suggests that a Libyan
surface-to-air missile downed the jet. Venkus, whose book, "Raid on
Qaddafi," describes the mission, said efforts were made to recover
the two crewmen in the days after the raid, but that details remain
confidential.
The Defense report found it likely that the escape pod landed in the
water and "sank due to a failure of the flotation device or the
inability of the aircrew to deploy it." It was unclear, the report
said, whether the pilot swam out of the pod and then drowned, or drowned
in the pod and floated out.
The report said Lorence probably drowned too, and either remained in the
pod or washed out to sea or into a coastal cave.
"It is possible, though not likely, his remains washed ashore, were
found and not repatriated. In the nearly 20 years since the loss
occurred, however, no concrete evidence indicating the Libyans have his
remains has surfaced."
Still, a spokesman for the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office said
officials want more from Libya. On its 2004 trip, the team saw wreckage
that appeared to be a portion of an F-111, and also pilots' helmets, but
the Libyans would not allow them a closer look.
"It could be Capt. Lorence's airplane, and if it is ... where did
you get it, when, and what did you find?" said spokesman Larry
Greer of a lingering question. "We're not saying we think they are
withholding information. We just want a closer look."
Since 2004, however, relations between the two countries have decayed.
In the meantime, Kruger is trying to arrange a meeting with Libyan
officials and, he hopes, a trip to Libya.
"I have my moments of insecurity with this investigation. I'm
dealing with not only the U.S. government, but Libya, too," he
said. Aside from his own passion, Kruger has little backing for his
quest.
"There's no such thing as an organization for El Dorado Canyon. It
was a one-time event. Two people were lost, and one of them was
found," he said. "There's only one family."
There is also Theodore Karantsalis, a Florida librarian who knew Lorence
as his childhood baby sitter and mentor.
For 10 years, Karantsalis has fought for government reports on Lorence,
and he has sued to pry more from the Pentagon. He also hopes some day a
benefactor will help him search the sea for the ejection pod. It is, he
admits, a long shot.
"(Lorence) arguably fought one of the first battles against the war
on terror as we know it today," said Karantsalis.
"We live in a world where the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Not
too many wheels have squeaked for him."
Reach John Simerman at 925-943-8072 or e-mail jsimerman@cctimes.com.
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http://www.nationalalliance.org/bits/naf2002/020323.htm
Can We Bring Capt. Paul Lorence Home? - You will not find
the name of Paul Lorence on the list of Prisoners or Missing from World
War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam or the Gulf. Yet, Air Force Capt.
Paul Lorence is a missing American serviceman.
Normally, we do in depth research before we bring the story of a missing
serviceman to our readers. That is not the case here. While the limited
information provided is factual, it is sketchy. More information is needed
and we will get it but for now, we felt that everyone should know of Capt.
Paul Lorence.
On April 14, 1986, President Ronald Reagan gave the order to launch
Operation El Dorado Canyon. Among those participating on the bombing raid
over Libya was Capt. Paul Lorence. He and his pilot were shot down during
that mission.
After doing some quick internet research, we learned Libya returned the
remains of the aircraft pilot, only after intervention by the Pope. So
far, we have been unable to find out how long the Libyan's held the pilots
remains or when they were returned. We also do not know at this point what
information, if any, the Libyans provided on Capt. Lorence, when the
pilots remains were returned.
The fact that the Libyans recovered the remains of the pilot might provide
indications that they know what may have happened to the backseater, Capt.
Lorence.
Can We Bring Capt. Paul Lorence Home? Is anyone
asking? |