Baron 52

What happened

In the early morning hours of February 5, 1973, just one week after the Paris Peace Accords were signed, a U.S. Air Force EC-47Q with the call sign Baron 52 took off from Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base on a night radio-direction-finding mission over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos.

Before dawn the aircraft was hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire and went down in Salavan Province, about 20 miles from the South Vietnam border. When searchers reached the wreck two days later, they found three of the four pilots and navigators still in the cockpit and the fourth nearby. The four men who rode in the back, the intelligence crew, were not there. Their seat belts were unbuckled, the jump door was gone, and so were their parachutes.

That same morning, U.S. intelligence intercepted enemy radio traffic about four captured American airmen being moved, and a Pathet Lao broadcast spoke of four "air pirates" taken prisoner. No other American aircraft went down that day. Within three weeks, all eight men were declared killed in action.

In 1992 a dog tag bearing Sgt. Joseph A. Matejov's name was found at the crash site. A few bone fragments were later buried at Arlington National Cemetery as the remains of all four rear crewmen. Their families' requests for DNA testing were denied, and they do not believe those remains are their sons. More than five decades later, the families are still asking what happened to them.