WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- The remains of two U.S. Air Force fighter-bomber pilots missing in action since the Vietnam War have been identified, the Defense Department said Monday.
The department's POW/Missing Personnel Office said the remains of Lt. Col. Charles M. Walling of Phoenix and Maj. Aado Kommendant of Lakewood, N.J., were returned to their families for burial with full military honors.
Remains of the two officers will be buried together at Arlington National Cemetery Wednesday -- the 46th anniversary of the crash that took their lives. A separate burial also was held for Walling June 15 at the national cemetery.
Walling and Kommendant were flying an F-4C that crashed Aug. 8, 1966, while on a close air support mission over Song Be province, Vietnam. Other U.S. forces nearby reported seeing the plane crash with no parachutes deployed. Subsequent search-and-rescue efforts failed to find the men.
A joint U.S.-Vietnamese search team investigated the crash site in 1992, and an excavation team two years later recovered a metal identification tag bearing Walling's name, and other military equipment. In 2010, the site was excavated a second time and more evidence, including human remains, was recovered.
Circumstantial and material evidence, along with DNA and other forensic identification tools, led to the identification of the remains.
