On January 27, 1973, the Paris Peace Accords, which ended the Vietnam War, was signed.
However, on February 5, 1973, the Baron 52,
an electronic warfare C-47 aircraft, began a covert and illegal mission to locate North
Vietnamese tanks traveling southbound and monitor movement on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
Aboard were two teams: the flight crew and a group of technology specialists.
En route, the aircraft was hit by anti-missile fire.
After notifying the control tower, the plane went missing, and half of the crew was never found.
Even 4 decades later, many, including some of the men's family members,
still believe that the remaining four airmen were captured by the North Vietnamese
and possibly even sent to the USSR to be tortured.
Is the mystery of the Baron 52 an unfortunate accident?
Or did the U.S government bury what could be the last case of prisoners of war taken by Vietnam?
A Mission
On the night of February 5, 1973, an EC-47Q electronic warfare collection aircraft was
on a midnight mission to locate North Vietnamese tanks traveling southbound,
as well as monitoring the famed Ho Chi Minh trail.
Less than a week before, on January 27, the Paris Peace Accords, which officially ended America's
involvement in Vietnam, had been signed. The aircraft was on a clandestine mission.
This converted cargo plane, a model frequently used since World War 2, belonged to the U.S 361st
Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron and was equipped with top-notch surveillance devices.
Four of its crewmembers were electronic warfare specialists from the 6994th Security
Squadron. The other four, which comprised the flight crew,
worked with the 361st Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron.
The mission, call-signed Baron 52,
took off from Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base just before midnight
and was set to establish radio communication with the Moonbeam airborne command-and-control center.
The mission required the EC-47Q to fly at a towering 10,000 feet.
This higher than average altitude was meant to further avoid artillery fire.
In case of an emergency, the plane was stocked with parachutes. Each of the
eight crew members also carried a survival radio preset to an emergency frequency.
The mission flew just as expected for the first hour. At 1:25 a.m,
just as the plane flew over the Salavan Province in Laos,
the crew reported they had been hit by anti-aircraft fire but had received no damage.
That was the last update the control tower received from Baron 52.
None of the crewmembers were ever seen alive again.
No Survivors
On February 7, days after the Baron 52's last radio contact, a U.S Air Force HH-3E Jolly
Green Giant search and rescue helicopter traveled to the area to look for wreckage.
When they spotted it, two pararescuemen and a radioman were lowered to the ground to examine
the situation. They found the plane upside down and assumed it had crashed in an inverted position
and that both of its wings had been sheared off.
After an hour of searching through the wreckage,
they found three bodies in the cockpit, still strapped into their seats. The bodies belonged
to Pilot George Spitz, Co-pilot Severo Primm, and Navigator Arthur Bollinger.
Outside of the wreckage, the rescuers found third pilot's, Lt. Robert Bernhardt, remains.
All the bodies for the flight crew were accounted for. However,
the four electronic warfare specialists were nowhere to be found.
While searching on the rear of the plane, investigators noticed that the jump door
had been removed. The safety belts were unbuckled, the parachutes were gone,
and all the sensitive equipment the men would've used for the mission was also missing.
Was there a possibility that the four specialists had escaped safely?
In a 1989 declassified Air Force oral history interview,
former technical sergeant radio operator, Ron Schoefield, talked about the first clue in the
burnt fuselage that pointed to the remaining 4 crewmembers exiting through the rear door.
Schoefield said the door looked like it had been kicked off because, [QUOTE]:
"There should have been some remains of the backenders in the fire, but there wasn't anything.
These aircraft flew with the doors on. If that aircraft had crashed with the door on,
there would have been a little bit of it left at the top."
Despite the missing door, Air Force superiors were
divided on whether there was a chance that the crew members had escaped.
Some believed that the men may have ejected from the plane before crashing.
Others thought they had survived the crash and taken in as prisoners of war,
going as far as saying they had been taken to the USSR. This theory also attempted to
prove the expensive equipment's disappearance, as some believed North Vietnam would want to use it.
However, superior officers ignored the theory and believed the men's
bodies had disappeared inside the dense and endless Vietnamese jungle.
Notifying The Family
Initially, the four missing airmen's families were
notified that they had gone missing in action while on a dangerous mission.
Colonel Humphries, the Commander of the unit that flew Baron 52, wrote a letter to
the Matejov family on February 13 that stated [QUOTE]: "After careful consideration, I feel
that there is a possibility that one or more crew members could have parachuted to safety, therefore
your son will continue to be carried in a missing status until a final determination can be made."
However, their hope was crushed after Colonel Humphries wrote to the Matejov family once again.
On February 22, a letter officially declared the
eight crewmembers of the Baron 52 mission had been killed in action,
despite the unknown whereabouts of the four members of the electronic warfare specialists.
According to the message [QUOTE]: "A careful review of all available facts has been made,
and there is no reasonable doubt that there were no survivors."
In March, Colonel Humphries had to write to the families again to tell them that the Air
Force's decision to officialize the deaths was not a premature nor rushed decision.
Humphries wrote [QUOTE]: "We did employ a certain amount of
conjecture in trying to visualize the events as they took place.
However, we made logical assumptions based on all the available facts and information."
The colonel emphasized that the critical element that aided in their decision was that the crew's
survival radios had gone missing. Yet, the airmen had never tried to establish contact.
According to Humphries [QUOTE]: "The intensive training of all flying personnel
makes it improbable that at least one of the crew members would not have instinctively transmitted
on one of the many pieces of communication equipment available in case of an emergency
unless they were all immediately and completely incapacitated."
Controversy
Despite the Air Force's official announcement,
many believe that the men were taken in as prisoners of war by the North Vietnamese Army.
On February 5, the day that the Baron 52 disappeared,
an intelligence base at Phu Bai Combat in South Vietnam
intercepted NVA intel, indicating they were transporting four captured American airmen.
This communication channel continued to be intercepted for three months.
Additionally, a Laotian double agent reported to the U.S that he had observed
a transport carrying four prisoners along a road near the wreckage site.
All these records remain classified by the U.S government.
When this information was first relayed to the American public in 1978, columnist Jack
Anderson stated that [QUOTE]: "The Pentagon deliberately gave the families misinformation."
In 1992, former sergeant Jerry Mooney, who intercepted the radio communications,
testified in front of a U.S Senate committee investigating the missing Americans' fate.
Pentagon officials also testified in front of the committee. They insisted
that no one could have survived the shot down and subsequent crash of the Baron 52
and confirmed that [QUOTE]: "there is no firm evidence that links the Baron 52 crew
to the single enemy report upon which Mooney apparently based his analysis."
However, without the bodies, Mooney's version of the events could not be entirely refuted.
For decades, members of the missing victims' families argued against the
Pentagon's version of the story. They claimed that, according to Air Force authorities,
the men might have been able to parachute safely from the aircraft, mostly since their equipment
was gone, their seats were unbuckled, and the bodies were nowhere in sight.
That same year, in November 1992,
the Laos government allowed a team of professionals to examine the wreckage,
where they found a dog tag engraved with the name of Sgt. Joseph Matejov, one of the missing men.
In the area, they also recovered 23 bone fragments and a piece of tooth.
The remains were taken to Hawaii, where they were examined for two years.
Finally, the specimens were declared to be the remains
of all the remaining Baron 52 crew members: Melton, Matejov, Cressman, and Brandenburg.
When the still-grieving families requested a DNA analysis on the bone fragments,
their requests were vehemently denied by the government.
In March 1996, the remains were interred at Arlington National Cemetery in a group burial.
All four families attended the ceremony solely out of respect
since none believed the bone fragments actually belonged to their family members.
Matejov
Even 4 decades after the downing of Baron 52, the case still causes controversy.
In 2016, after years of pressure from the Matejov family,
the Air Force and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began to re-examine the incident.
The family's intentions were to switch his status from killed to missing in action.
Missing soldier Joseph Matejov's nine siblings advocated for their brother
and presented evidence compiled by them.
John Matejov, Joe's younger brother, took on the case of his missing brother. He was the
one who gathered boxes upon boxes of evidence from decades of press publications and investigations.
John called on Wyoming Senators and Congressmen in petitioning the Pentagon for further information.
He also appealed to then-President Barack Obama.
The Matejov's wanted justice. According to John [QUOTE]: "MIA is not closure, though it is better
than this travesty that exists in the file to this day. We shouldn't have to fight for that."
When Congress reviewed the case, Matejov, who had just turned 21 when he went missing,
was not changed to missing in action. As of winter 2020, the entire crew of the Baron
52 is listed by the Defense POW-MIA Accounting Agency as accounted for.
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