ADAMS

Bracelet being made

Name: Lee Aaron Adams
Rank/Branch: O2/US Air Force
Unit: (unknown)
Date of Birth: 29 July 1938
Home City of Record: Willits CA
Date of Loss: 19 April 1966
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 173600N 1062157E (XE449463)
Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: F105D
Other Personnel In Incident: none
Refno: 0307

REMARKS:

Source: Compiled 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 in 1998.

SYNOPSIS: Larry Adams loved to fly. His classmates at the Air Force Academy wrote upon his graduation in 1963, "flying is his first love and his last, and he is in his glory only with stick in hand and throttle forward."

After he left the Academy, Larry trained on the "Thud", the Republic F105 Thunderchief, which he flew in Vietnam. The F105D is credited with making more strikes against North Vietnam than any other U.S. aircraft, but also took more losses. The F105 was constantly being modified to meet changing combat needs. A specially modified version of the F105 was the backbone of the Wild Weasel program, initiated in 1965 to improve the U.S. Air Force's electronic warfare capability.

On April 19, 1966, Adams was flying a bombing mission in an F105D over Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam, about 20 miles southwest of the city of Quang Khe. His aircraft was observed to crash with no ejection seen and no emergency beeper signals heard. The Air Force established sufficient evidence that Lt. Adams died at the time of the crash, but that there was a good chance the Vietnamese knew his fate.

Not really unexpectedly, Larry was not among the 591 Americans released from enemy prisons at the end of the war. He may not be among the hundreds of Americans experts believe to still be alive, held in Southeast Asia. But one can imagine he would cheerfully fly one last mission, "with stick in hand and throttle forward" to bring his comrades home.

Lee Aaron Adams graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1963.

Vietnam War Missing In Action Serviceman Identified

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced
today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam
War, have been identified and are being returned to his family for burial.

            He is Air Force 1st Lt. Lee A. "Larry" Adams of Willits, Calif. A
memorial service with full military honors will be held at Beale Air Force Base,
Calif. on June 1, and he will be buried in Willits at a later date.

            U.S. specialists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC)
conducted a number of investigations as they sought information on Adams's loss.
In September 1993, joint U.S.-Vietnamese team members interviewed three villagers
who said they witnessed the shootdown in 1966. They led the team to a supposed
crash site, but no aircraft debris or human remains were found. Another informant
turned over a skeletal fragment he had found near the site of the crash.

            In October 1994 another joint team interviewed two other Vietnamese
citizens who recalled the shootdown and the burial of the remains of a pilot
nearby. A third team re-interviewed four Vietnamese in 1998 who had supplied
information earlier.

            Then in November 2004, a joint team excavated the suspected burial and
crash sites, but found neither aircraft debris nor other material evidence.
However, a villager living nearby gave the team a fragment of a wristwatch and a
signal mirror he claimed to have recovered from the crash site. The wristwatch and
mirror are consistent with items issued to, or used by, U.S. military aviators in
the mid-1960s.

            Scientists of the JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification
Laboratory used mitochondrial DNA as one of the forensic tools to identify the
remains as those of Adams.

            Of the 88,000 Americans missing in action from all conflicts, 1,833 are
from the Vietnam War, with 1,397 of those within the country of Vietnam. Another
750 Americans have been accounted for in Southeast Asia since the end of the war.
Of the Americans identified, 524 are from within Vietnam.