Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs A United States pilot who disappeared while conducting a spy mission during the Vietnam War has finally been accounted for, military officials said Tuesday.U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Donald W. Downing was assigned to the 557th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 12th Tactical Fighter Wing, 7th Air Force in September 1967, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said in a news release. Downing, 33, was piloting one of two aircraft in a nighttime armed reconnaissance mission over what was then known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on Sept. 5, 1967. While the two planes were on a run to the target, the first saw a “large, bright fireball in the air,” according to the agency. Downing did not respond to radio calls to his F-4C Phantom II. And though search and rescue efforts started at daylight, electronic and visual searches of the area found nothing.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Donald W. Downing.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
More than a decade later, on April 28, 1978, Downing was reported as killed in action. He was later posthumously promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the DPAA said. His name was recorded on the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the American Battle Monuments Commission’s Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, along with the names of other unaccounted-for soldiers from the Vietnam War. The incident was investigated for decades, to little result, the DPAA said. Finally, in the spring of 2024, a recovery team found life support equipment, possible material evidence, aircraft wreckage, unexploded ordnance and possible osseous materials — bones — at a site in Quang Binh Province, Vietnam. The DPAA uses the intersection of “history, diplomacy and science” to make identifications, Ashley Wright, a public affairs specialist with the agency, told CBS News in 2024. Researchers and experts search archival records to learn about the circumstances where a fallen soldier was last seen, and investigative teams talk to surviving witnesses and examine the area for clues. Recovery teams, like the ones that found the evidence at Downings’ crash site in 2024, are then sent to the area, Wright said.
Then, once everything is back at the lab, multiple scientists combine their expertise to help make identifications. Forensic odontologists, a kind of dentist, can match evidence to dental records. Tests that reveal a deceased person’s diet are used to determine what country a soldier was from — Americans are more likely to eat a corn-based diet, Wright said. Family members are asked for reference samples of DNA, which can help show a genetic match. The evidence from Downings’ crash was brought to the DPAA laboratory in June 2024. The DPAA said its scientists used anthropological analysis, multiple forms of DNA analysis and material and circumstantial evidence to identify the remains as Downings’.His family received a full briefing on his identification, the DPAA said, though it did not specify which members that included. Downing was survived by his wife and four children, as well as his parents and four siblings, according to a news clipping published after his disappearance. The news clipping said that Downing had been reported missing in action just a few days before the couple’s seventh wedding anniversary. A rosette will be placed next to his name on the Courts of the Missing to indicate that he has been accounted for. He will be honored with a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery.
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Kerry Breen
Kerry Breen is a news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University’s Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News’ TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.
