Rank/Branch: O5/US Navy Unit: Observation Squadron 67 Date of Birth: 04 January 1926 Home City of Record: Casselton ND 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; Arthur C. Buck; Michael Roberts; Gale Siow; Phillip Stevens; 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 2001. 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. ============================== Posted on: Sunday, July 8, 2001 Heroes of 'Secret War' finally fly home Map of VO-67 crash site By William Cole Advertiser Military Affairs Writer On Jan. 11, 1968, Navy Cmdr. Delbert Olson and eight crewmen aboard a Neptune OP-2E aircraft were flying vulnerably low and slow in a place Americans ostensibly weren't supposed to be during the Vietnam War. The Navy plane was 20 miles inside Laos, a neutral country, on a top-secret mission to drop a series of listening devices along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, when it probably took ground fire and nose-dived into a remote jungle peak, killing all aboard. Thirty-three years later, the crew is coming home. And the story of Observation Squadron 67, declassified in 1998, finally is being told. A repatriation ceremony is scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday at Hickam Air Force Base. The eavesdropping network on which Observation Squadron 67 was working was dubbed "McNamara's Line" after then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. He devised the plan to monitor North Vietnam's troop and materiel movements into the South over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a network of roads and trails. Observation Squadron 67, or VO-67, made regular flights over the trail, but the Jan. 11 flight was the last for Olson and Crew 2. As he dropped down through low cloud cover, Olson's last transmitted words were that he saw an opening, and he was going through to see whether he could accomplish the drop. The routes flown by VO-67 over sites like Tchepone and Ban Laboy Ford were among some of the most heavily defended in the region. Retired Air Force Col. Jimmie H. Butler recalled he never flew the corridors at less than 5,000 feet, and not more than 10 seconds in a straight line. But the sensor drops required the hybrid aircraft with two props and two jet engines to fly straight and level at 500 feet, making them easy prey. Observation Squadron 67 lost three planes and 20 crewmen during six weeks in 1968. For decades to come, however, Pentagon silence over the "Secret War" in Laos would obscure the squadron's bravery from family and history as completely as the monsoon clouds that often blanketed the region. Following Tuesday's repatriation ceremony the U.S. Army's Central Identification Laboratory-Hawai'i, which took part in the March recovery, will undertake identification, a process that could take up to a year. Olson's son David, who was 7 when his father disappeared in the region the airmen called "Steel Tiger North," will be at Hickam on Tuesday. So will about a half dozen other VO-67 family members. For the younger Olson, getting his father's remains back on American soil will be a milestone, as was finding out what really happened to Crew 2. Seeing his father buried at Arlington National Cemetery is his next goal. The family found out within a few months that the crash site was in Laos, but little more for years. "I remember thinking that was weird - why was he in Laos?" recalls David Olson, who lives in Kansas City. "They wouldn't say what he was doing flying an OP-2E over the Ho Chi Minh Trail until 30 years after the mission." Fighting in Laos lasted from 1961 to 1975, but both the United States and North Vietnam refused to acknowledge the combat taking place in the officially neutral country. The last time David Olson saw his father, a career Navy officer who met his mother in 1957 and had been a public affairs officer with the Blue Angels, was when Delbert Olson came back from Southeast Asia in November 1967 and took the family to Disneyland. When the Laos mission was declassified in 1998, family members from VO-67 started linking up using the Internet. They held a first reunion in Las Vegas in 1999. "I knew my father was piloting the aircraft that went down with eight men, and those eight men had families," Olson, 41, said. "It was frustrating mainly not getting to know the crew and their families, and basically grieve with their families. We had nothing to tell us who these people were." Records had been destroyed after the unit was disbanded in June 1968. For three decades the secret mission and sacrifices of VO-67 were known to few outside the squadron and air units that supported it. "It was like it never happened - until these guys started getting together in '99," said Butler, who flew forward air control with the missions in 1967. In addition to the loss of Crew 2 in January of 1968, two more OP-2Es were downed by enemy gunners the following month, Butler said. The 20 VO-67 crewmen lost in early 1968 compares to 20 Air Force pilots downed from Butler's squadron between January 1966 and the mid-1970s, when it flew some of the most dangerous missions over Laos and Cambodia. Those who volunteered for the missions, flown out of a remote airbase at Nakhon Phanom in Thailand along the Mekong River, knew going in the odds weren't good. Butler, who now lives in Colorado Springs, recalls being told VO-67 was expected to take losses of 60 to 75 percent. Butler flew unarmed Cessnas over the heavily-defended Ho Chi Minh Trail at 5,000 feet, looking for truck convoys and directing air strikes against them. When VO-67 arrived, a typical mission involved three Cessna O-2 Super Skymasters as spotters and two to four F-4 Phantom fighters providing missiles and bombs. While the other aircraft swerved back and forth, the OP-2Es had to fly in a straight line at 500 feet to accurately drop the 3-foot-long cylindrical sensors, some of which were designed to hang up in trees and pick up sound, while others embedded in the ground and listened for the rumble of trucks. "We dropped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those things," recalls Bob Reynolds, who flew with Crew 5 and now lives in San Jose, Calif. Reynolds received an air medal for his involvement with VO-67 33 years after the fact. "I remember being so low you could see the bad guys' eyeballs down there," Reynolds said. The sensors were rigged so acid was released to destroy the electronics inside if the casing was opened. One sensor was trucked to Hanoi for study, and monitors listened to the enemy troops' conversation during the trip before sending in an air strike to destroy it. Following the Crew 2 crash, search aircraft pinpointed the location on the upper slopes of 4,583-foot Phoulouang Mountain. The squadron's dog, Snoopy, lay by the body of a crewman. In 1996 the first recovery mission was mounted by the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, and Olson was given his father's dog tags, but the site was deemed too dangerous to proceed with the task. There were poisonous snakes, falling rocks and a 35-degree mountain slope to deal with. But the VO-67 family refused to take no for an answer, and the group mounted a campaign that resulted in President Clinton, congressional representatives, and military officials getting a barrage of letters saying "it is time to bring these men home." Brig. Gen. Harry Axson, who took over command of the Joint Task Force in 1999, flew over the crash site last December and ordered in an assessment team in January. The conclusion was that risks were manageable. With a specialized team that included recovery experts from the central identification lab and Army mountaineering soldiers, the task force went back to Phoulouang Mountain in March. Army Lt. Col. Franklin Childress, public affairs officer for the Hawai'i-based Joint Task Force, said ropes and ascenders had to be used to reach ledges across which the plane wreckage had spilled. Because of its inaccessibility and remoteness, the site had not been disturbed. "It was incredible," Childress said. "As you were flying up there, it was like something out of Indiana Jones." A 1,000-foot waterfall spilled below the wreckage site. At the site itself, Childress spotted a fire extinguisher here, a gauge over there. A mini-gun jutted from a rock pile. "You couldn't tell it was a fuselage," he said. "It was more like a wreckage field." Crew 2's remains are among 17 sets from Vietnam, Laos and North Korea arriving at Hickam on Tuesday. An all-service honor guard is planned at the 15th Air Base Wing Operations Building. "Having (my father) brought back off that mountain in Laos is a big load off my mind," Olson said. "To have him brought home to the U.S. with his crew is 80 percent of the closure to bringing him home." He plans on bringing his family to Hawai'i when the identification is complete, to escort his father's body home for burial at Arlington National Cemetery. He just wishes it could have been sooner. "When you fight for your country, you shouldn't be stuck on the side of a mountain or in a creek or in a jungle," Olson said. "Your remains should be brought back home." You can reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8033. ====================== Three decades later, Kansas family approaches goal of seeing lost Vietnam pilot buried Thursday July 12 07:03 AM EDT By GRACE HOBSON - The Kansas City Star David Olson of Prairie Village has spent most of his 40 years knowing that his father lay dead on a mountainside in Laos. Only in the past few years has he learned what the Naval pilot was doing when his OP-2E aircraft crashed in January 1968. It was only this week that he witnessed his father's remains -- or what thinks are his father's remains -- touch American soil. After Olson and his father's former squadron buddies launched a fierce campaign, the U.S. military risked a dangerous mission in March to recover the remains of Navy Cmdr. Delbert Olson and his eight crew members. A repatriation ceremony Tuesday at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii brought Olson a step closer to the ultimate goal of a proper military burial for the crew at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington. "They've been together for 33 years," Olson said. "I want to see them come to rest in Arlington together." Final mission David Olson was 7 when his father last hugged him goodbye. The Navy officer headed off to Thailand and the secret Observation Squadron 67, known as VO-67. The squadron's mission was to drop electronic sensors along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a North Vietnamese supply route through Laos. The sensors could pick up sound and vibrations from truck movements, providing key reconnaissance. But the drops were risky. The aircraft were heavy and slow, and they were required to fly at 500 feet, exposing them to enemy fire. A former VO-67 member recalled being told that the squadron would lose 60 percent to 75 percent of its crews, according to a history of the squadron. David Olson's sister, Dana Snyder, who lives in Overland Park, remembers talking with her father for the last time. He called his children shortly before Christmas 1967. "He was subdued," Dana Snyder said. "He knew his mission, that he had a 50 percent chance of making it back alive. He chose all single crew members except his co-pilot. It was sobering." Radio contact with Olson's plane was lost at 9:57 a.m. Jan. 11, 1968. Within weeks, an Air Force plane found the suspected crash site and determined that the plane crashed 150 feet from the top of a 4,583-foot mountain in Laos. Pictures from the search mission revealed the crew's canine mascot, Snoopy, lying with a crew member. There were no indications of survivors, and enemy fire was heavy in the area, so no further search and rescue was conducted. Recovery campaign While the Olson family got regular communications from the Navy and learned early on that the plane had gone down in Laos, information was scarce until 1996. David Olson, an engineer who represents aerospace industry manufacturers, got so frustrated that he began taking steps to run his own recovery mission. His aerospace contacts offered help; he knew a helicopter pilot and someone with contacts in Laos. "I had daughters who at the time were the same ages my sister and I were when my dad went missing," Olson said. "I thought, the only thing I need is to go there and get missing myself." And then suddenly, a development. The Joint Task Force -- Full Accounting, which provides an accounting for missing personnel, sent in a crew to find and investigate the site. Rappelling down a sheer cliff, the crew found the site and recovered remains of two crew members, but not those of Olson. The crew did, however, bring back one of his dog tags. But the area is thick with vipers, the monsoon-prone weather is hostile to helicopters, and the site is difficult to reach. The military decided against further recovery missions. Then in 1998, another break. The records of the mission were declassified. For the first time, squadron members were able to begin contacting each other. At the first reunion in 1999, a group of men walked David Olson's way as he stood in line to check in at the hotel. One man's eyes met his. "When he was 10 feet away, his eyes filled up with tears and he said, `You're Commander Olson's son, aren't you?' " Olson recalled. Through such reunions and Web sites, the men gathered their VO-67 family back together. Then they began their mission to get their lost members back as well. A letter-writing and lobbying campaign ensued. By March, a team from the Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii was in Laos. The 13-member team, including 10 Americans, spent three weeks carefully excavating the site and documenting their finds. More than half the remains at the site were recovered, along with the second of Olson's dog tags, said team anthropologist David Rankin. The remains now will be identified in a process that could take six to nine months, said Col. David Pagano, commander of the Central Identification Laboratory. The lab expects to send in a crew next year to recover the rest of the remains, Pagano said. The recovery missions worry Dana Snyder, who fears more deaths, especially since the loss of a 16-member recovery team in Vietnam in April. David Olson wishes the whole process had taken place long, long ago. The mission to bring the crew home was fueled by a pact the crew members made: If a plane goes down, get the men home. "I'm very proud of David for what he has done," said his mother, Patricia Fohey of Leawood. "And his father would be, too." @tag1:To reach reporter Grace Hobson, call (816) 234-7744 or send e-mail to ghobson@kcstar.com. ============================= Navy airmen's remains to bring rest for Kansans By Stan Finger The Wichita Eagle August 8, 2001 Sue Jenkins has been married for more than 30 years and has four grown daughters. But she openly admits that another man besides her husband lingers in her heart and mind: Denis Anderson. He was her college sweetheart, and they married in 1966. Four days before their first anniversary, he left for Vietnam. She never saw him again. In January 1968, the plane he was co-piloting over the jungles of Laos crashed into the side of a mountain shrouded in clouds. There were no survivors -- and no way to get them home because of hostile forces, terrain and weather. "It's always on your mind," Jenkins concedes. That's why she embraced news that an American search team had retrieved remains from Anderson's plane in March. The effort was chronicled in the July 22 issue of Parade magazine. Besides Anderson, who was a native of Hope, Kan., the pilot of the plane, Delbert Olson, also has ties to Kansas. His son, David Olson, now lives in Prairie Village, a Kansas City suburb. Jenkins has good reason for wanting to know if Anderson's remains were among those recovered. "For me, it's not so much a matter of closure. I can't imagine thinking any differently," Jenkins said from her home in San Marcos, Texas. "The important thing for me is to fulfill one of Denny's last requests." Anderson wanted to be buried in a national cemetery, and Jenkins hopes his remains and those of his crewmates can eventually be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Remains of at least some of the nine men who died in the crash were honored in a repatriation ceremony in Hawaii last month. It is expected to take months to identify the remains. David Olson was in Hawaii for the repatriation ceremony. "I have a lot of good memories... the trips and going on drives with him and going to the base and getting on his plane and things like that," said Olson, who was 7 when his father died. When his own children reached the age that he and his sister were when the plane crashed, David Olson took them to POW/MIA meetings. "They've been to the (Vietnam) wall several times," Olson said. "They understand. They think it's kind of nice to have a father past the age of 7 or 8." Denis Anderson has always been a part of his wife's life -- even after she married a minister in 1970, two years after the plane crash. "Our four daughters have just grown up knowing," Jenkins said. "The twins, when they were 4, they thought Denis was their 'other daddy.' We've had some unusual conversations: 'What would you do if he came back?' " But Denis Anderson suspected he wasn't going to come back. With a wink here, a few carefully chosen words there, he said goodbye to family and friends before he left in November 1967. He just couldn't bear to share that sense of foreboding with his wife. Anderson's concern was well-founded. His squadron was ordered to perform top-secret reconnaissance flights over Laos. They would drop sensors so that American forces could track enemy movements and bomb convoys. The mission required the planes to fly at low levels over enemy territory in difficult terrain. That was fine with Anderson. He wanted to be a missionary pilot and thought the low-level flying over trees would be good training for his work spreading Christianity into remote areas. On the morning of Jan. 11, 1968, completing their mission required dipping beneath a bank of clouds, dropping their sensors and climbing back to safety. The first two planes made the drops safely. Olson and Anderson dropped into the clouds -- and never returned. At first, the crew was listed as missing in action. Nearly eight weeks later, that was changed to killed in action. The official Navy report stated that the plane flew into the side of a mountain. But Anderson's squadron mates couldn't accept that, given the skill of the pilots. They told Jenkins they were convinced the plane was shot down, which raised the possibility the crew had been able to bail out before the crash. They might be prisoners of war, their squadron mates said, or even somewhere out there in the jungle. Jenkins moved back to Manhattan, staying with her in-laws. "All summer I was kind of in limbo: 'Am I a widow or not?' " she said. Then Jenkins began hearing about Anderson's farewell messages from his loved ones, and she heard an inner message of her own: She didn't have to pray for him as a prisoner anymore. While there was no physical evidence yet of Anderson's death, she said, "There was a peace in my heart that God gave me at that point, that I could go ahead and move on with my life." Military widows were allowed to use their husband's GI Bill for schooling, so Sue went to a Bible school in Texas. There, she met Tommy Jenkins. They married in December 1970. "God gives him grace to deal with all of this," Jenkins said. "Most men wouldn't be able to deal with it." Tommy Jenkins has offered to be the minister who presides over the funeral for Anderson, Olson and the others at Arlington National Cemetery. That will probably be more than a year away, given how long it will take to identify the remains retrieved from the wreckage. "I really am hoping and praying that they will find Denny," Sue Jenkins said. "It won't be devastating if they don't, but it'll be disappointing." ------------------------------------ Reach Stan Finger at 268-6437 or sfinger@wichitaeagle.com. State/Regional Discovery of remains heartens Kansans Plane that went down over Laos included two with ties to Sunflower State The Associated Press Tuesday, August 7, 2001 Wichita - Sue Jenkins long ago accepted that her first husband died when the plane he was copiloting disappeared while making top-secret reconnaissance flights over Laos. But news that an American search team had retrieved remains from that plane in March made her happy for another reason. It could give Jenkins the opportunity to fulfill the wishes of Denis Anderson to be buried in a national cemetery. Jenkins, who remarried two years after Anderson disappeared in January 1968, said she hopes the remains of Anderson and those of his crewmates can eventually be interred at Arlington National Cemetery. Jenkins and Anderson, a native of Hope, were college sweethearts, and they married in 1966. Four days before their first anniversary, he left for Vietnam. Jenkins never saw Anderson again. The official Navy report says that on January 1968 the plane he was copiloting crashed into the side of a cloud-covered mountain. There were no survivors and no way to get them home because of hostile forces, terrain and weather. "It's always on your mind," Jenkins said. The pilot of the downed plane, Delbert Olson, also has ties to Kansas. His son, David Olson, lives in Prairie Village. He traveled in July to Hawaii for a ceremony honoring some of the nine men who died in the crash. It is expected to take months to identify the remains. "I have a lot of good memories ... the trips and going on drives with him and going to the base and getting on his plane and things like that," said Olson, who was 7 when his father died. Jenkins was not always so confident about her husband's fate. Given the skill of the pilots, Anderson's squadron mates couldn't accept the official Navy explanation that the plane flew into the side of a mountain. Jenkins moved in with her in-laws in Manhattan and spent the summer wondering whether she was a widow. Then Jenkins began hearing about the comments Anderson had made to relatives and friends before he departed, sharing his sense of foreboding. "There was a peace in my heart that God gave me at that point," she said, "that I could go ahead and move on with my life." Back