(July 17, 2008)—Chief Warrant Officer Bobby L. McKain of Garden City, Kan. and Warrant Officer Arthur F. Chaney of Vienna, Va. will finally be laid to rest, 40-years after the two 1st Cavalry Division aviators died in the explosive crash of an Army helicopter in Vietnam.
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office announced Thursday that the remains of the two servicemen have been identified and will be returned to their families with full military honors.
McKain will be buried on Aug. 11 and Chaney on Sept. 16 at Arlington National Cemetery.
The two soldiers were assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division’s A Troop, 1st Squad, 9th Cavalry when they took off on May 3, 1968 on a mission to support a reconnaissance team operating west of Khe Sanh in South Vietnam’s Quang Tri Province.
Their AH-1G Cobra gunship was hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire and exploded in midair.
It crashed west of Khe Sanh near the Laos-Vietnam border.
Enemy fire made it impossible to recover the two soldiers’ bodies.
Two decades later, an American citizen with ties to refugees from Southeast Asia turned over remains from an AC-130 aircraft crash in Laos.
Tests determined the remains weren’t associated with the AC-130 crash, but did confirm that some were those of McKain and Chaney.
Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command teams made five attempts between 1989 and 2003 to locate the helicopter’s crash site, but could not confirm the location.
But through the use of mitochondrial dental comparisons, and other forensic identification tools as well as circumstantial evidence, scientists were able to confirm the identity of the remains.
The 1-9 Cav was inactivated at Fort Hood in July 2005, but was reactivated three months later with the 4th Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Bliss.
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