|
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Name: Charles
Edward Darr |
Remains Returned 15 December 1988 Other
Personnel In Incident: James L. Lollar (returned POW); Randall J.
Craddock; George B. Lockhart; Ronald D. Perry; Bobby A. Kirby
(remains returned) Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project
(919/527-8079) 01 April 1991 from one or more of the following:
raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with
POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Copyright 1991
Homecoming II Project.
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS: On December
21, 1972, a B52 bomber from the 72nd Strat Wing, Anderson AFB
Guam, was sent on a bombing mission during the famed Christmas
Bombings during that month. By the 21st, when the B52 departed
for the Hanoi region, 8 B52's and several fighter bombers had
been lost since December 18, and 43 flyers had been captured or
killed during the same period.
The Christmas Bombings, despite press accounts to the contrary,
were of the most precise the world had seen. Pilots involved in
the immense series of strikes generally agree that the strikes
against anti-aircraft and strategic targets was so successful
that the U.S., had it desired, "could have taken the entire
country of Vietnam by inserting an average Boy Scout troop in
Hanoi and marching them southward."
A very high percentage of B52 aircrew were captured immediately
and returned in 1973, a much higher percentage than strategists
imagined. Beyond that number, several were known to have made it
safely to the ground, yet did not return for unknown reasons.
When the B52 from 72 Strat Wing, Guam was hit by a surface-to-air
missile in the early hours of December 21, 1972, the fate of the
crewmembers was varied. Multiple emergency beepers were heard by
aircraft in the area, indicating that several of the crew members
had safely bailed out of the crippled aircraft.
James Lollar was captured and subsequently released in March the
following year. The U.S. did not know he had been captured.
Ronald Perry's remains were returned exactly 3 years to the day
from the day he was shot down. The remains of Randall J.
Craddock, Bobby A. Kirby, George B. Lockhart and Charles E. Darr
were returned six days short of the sixteenth anniversary of
their shoot-down. The positive identifications of the second
group to be returned was announced in August 1989.
Another returned POW, Ernest Moore, mentioned that he believed
Darr had been held at the "Zoo" in Hanoi, but the U.S.
never changed Darr's status from Missing to Prisoner. There is
every reason to suspect the Vietnamese knew what happened to all
the crewmembers, but especially Charles E. Darr.
Whose radios beeped in distress from the ground that day in
December 1972? When and how did Bobby Kirby, Randall Craddock,
Charles Darr, Ronald Perry and George Lockhart die? If any of
them were prisoners of war, why did we allow the Vietnamese wait
16 years to return their remains?
George Barry Lockhart is a 1969 graduate of the United States Air
Force Academy.
As long as
even one American remains alive, held against his will, we must
do everything possible to bring him home alive.
POW/MIA Data & Bios supplied by the P.O.W. NETWORK Skidmore, MO. USA