Name: Gerald Gordon Van Buren
Rank/Branch: O3/US Air Force
Unit: 314th Tactical Airlift Wing, Nha Trang Airbase, South Vietnam
Date of Birth: 08 June 1935
Home City of Record: Toledo OH
Date of Loss: 29 December 1967
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 220900N 1032200E (UK315501)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 4
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: C130E
Other Personnel In Incident: James R. Williams; Gean P. Clapper; Charles
P.
Claxton; Wayne A. Eckley; Donald E. Fisher; Edwin N. Osborne; Frank C.
Parker;
Edward J. Darcy; Gordon J. Wenaas; Jack McCrary; (all missing)
REMARKS: RADIO CONTACT LOST
SYNOPSIS:
On December 29, 1967, a C130E aircraft departed Nha Trang
Airbase
shortly after midnight on an operational mission over North Vietnam.
The
eleven
man crew aboard the aircraft included Maj. Charles P. Claxton; Capt.
Edwin N.
Osborne Jr., and Capt. Gerald G. Van Buren (all listed as pilots); and
crewmen
SSgt. Edward J. Darcy; SSgt. Gean P. Clapper; SSgt. Wayne A. Eckley;
LtCol.
Donald E. Fisher; TSgt. Jack McCrary; Capt. Frank C. Parker III; Capt.
Gordon
J. Wenaas; and Sgt. James R. Williams.
At 4:30 a.m., the pilot made radio contact with Nha Trang and said the
mission
was progressing as scheduled. No further contact was made.
The
aircraft's last
known position was in extreme northwest North Vietnam, in mountainous
Lai Chau
Province.
The eleven Americans aboard the aircraft were declared Missing
in
Action.
When the war ended, and 591 Americans were released from Vietnamese
prison
camps, the crew of the C130 was not among them.
Although the Vietnamese
pledged, as part of the Paris Peace Accords, to release all prisoners
and make
the fullest possible accounting of the missing, they have done neither.
The
Vietnamese deny any knowledge of the crew of the C130.
Alarmingly, evidence continues to mount that Americans were left as
prisoners
in Southeast Asia and continue to be held today.
Unlike "MIAs" from
other wars,
most of the nearly 2500 men and women who remain missing in Southeast Asia can
be accounted for.
If even one was left alive (and many authorities
estimate the
numbers to be in the hundreds), we have failed as a nation until and
unless we
do everything possible to secure his freedom and bring him home.
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