When a U.S. service member is lost within a military combat zone, U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) officials ensure the principle “no man left behind” is held true, with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) working to find missing service members even decades after the conflict they were involved in ended.
Recently, DNA analysis carried out by the DPAA helped bring the remains of U.S. Army Sergeant George Frank Bishop to Centralia for burial 82 years after he was lost during World War II.
But what about service members who are lost here at home in non-combat situations? For example, the 95 service members and their relatives on Flight 293, who departed McChord Air Force Base on June 3, 1963, on a doomed Douglas DC-7 that crashed into the Gulf of Alaska taking the service members up to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska.
According to Centralia resident Shawn Murphy — who served in the Army during the Vietnam War — while some effort is given to locate those missing not in action (MNIA) initially, DOD officials don’t do much after the initial search is concluded.
“What happens with these MNIA’s, generally the military gives you anything from a six- to 10-day search, then they’re done. They’re done with the families, collect your life insurance and whatever,” Murphy said. “There’s no real military memorials for them. A family member might get somebody coming with a flag, maybe.”
This is why he and other volunteers around the country have taken it upon themselves to help locate crash sites like Flight 293, or if they can’t find them, at least get memorials made to help surviving family members get closure.
Murphy visited The Chronicle last month to talk more about their efforts.
Some of those other volunteers include Feliks Banel, a historian, radio show host and podcaster for KIRO Newsradio in Seattle, Cliff Sjolund, a retired U.S. Air Force pilot living in Minnesota, and Lee Corbin, another retired Air Force pilot.
Additionally, there is now a bipartisan effort being made in the U.S. Congress to pass the Flight 293 Remembrance Act, which is currently under review in the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.
Introduced by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, and cosponsored by Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, the act would mandate the DOD and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to create and maintain a database for all non-combat military plane crashes to preserve the names, ranks and service details of MNIAs.
It would also enhance DOD resources available to families of MNIAs and help them get connected to peer support networks. DOD officials would also be required to submit annual reports to Congress evaluating their efforts to provide support by gathering family feedback to see how it can be further improved.
“The same service members who happen to die in a training mission, or happen to die when they’re going from one base to another in non-combat situations, they too have committed to serving the country and doing their job,” Banel said in a phone call with The Chronicle. “They’re job at the moment they’re killed is being in that plane on behalf of the military. The fact there’s no ammunition being fired at them or attempts to kill them by an enemy, it doesn’t lessen the sacrifice to the families. A kid whose dad disappeared on a training mission, and a kid whose dad died in combat, they suffer pretty much the same way.”
Murphy and his fellow volunteers are urging locals to contact their representatives and senators to express support for the Flight 293 Remembrance Act.
As for Flight 293, the plane’s final resting place was never found in the Gulf of Alaska, but based on coordinates obtained by triangulating the plane’s last radio call, it is believed to be resting around 8,000 feet underwater.
Working together with Banel, Murphy was able to get a memorial dedicated to the 95 service members, their relatives and the six crew members who were lost on Flight 293 at the Tahoma National Cemetery in Kent.
The families are grateful for the efforts, according to Greg Barrowman, of Kent, who was only 7 when his older brother Army Private Bruce Barrowman, 17, died on Flight 293.
“He had just gotten out of basic training at Fort Ord, California, and was going to his first assignment, up to Fort Richardson in Alaska,” Greg said in a phone call with The Chronicle.
Growing up near Tahoma National Cemetery, Greg recalled his father would hear military burials being performed and often wished something would be done to memorialize the Flight 293 victims too.
After years of his own efforts to get DOD officials to dedicate some kind of memorial, Murphy, Corbin and Banel joined his efforts and were finally able to get a memorial plaque dedicated at Tahoma on June 3, 2023 — 60 years to the day of the crash.
“I invited a lot of people and through social media and word-of-mouth, were part of the family and friends of those who were lost on the plane. We had over 100 people come out here for the dedication,” Greg added.
Flight 293 isn’t the only missing military plane Murphy and his fellow volunteers have helped locate in the Pacific Northwest.
In 2021, they helped finally bring closure to the families of U.S. Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Benjamin Vreeland and Navy Ensign Gaston Mayes, who became MNIAs on March 11, 1949, when their SNJ-5 Texan trainer plane crashed in Black Lake north of Snoqualmie after taking off from Sand Point Naval Air Station.
While some naval aviation items were found in the forest around Black Lake after the crash, DOD officials never made any real efforts to locate the wreckage as they believed the plane broke up upon impact, with the wreckage sinking deep into the muddy lakebed. Officially, they never declared this, though.
After his own research efforts along with those carried out by Corbin, Murphy was able to get the Navy Underwater History and Heritage Command to send letters to Vreeland and Mayes’ families officially stating they believed Black Lake was the SNJ-5 and its crew’s final resting place.
“The bottom of that lake is so soft, you can probably go anywhere from four feet to 20 feet in the mud without hitting a solid bottom,” Murphy said.
Together with help from the American Legion Post 79 in Snoqualmie, they were also able to dedicate a memorial on the shores of Black Lake for Vreeland and Mayes.
Outside of Washington, Murphy is still working with Sjolund, who is leading efforts in Texas to locate the final resting place of the eight crew members on an Air Force B-52 which crashed somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico offshore of Matagorda Island on Feb. 28, 1968, on a training exercise.
Those lost included Air Force Master Sergeant Kermit Casey, Major Frank Salavarria, Major Philip Strine, Captain Charles Roberts, Captain Thomas Childs, Captain John Pantilla, Captain Michael Carroll and 1st Lieutenant William Causey.
After two weeks of searching, DOD officials simply said the missing B-52 was “downed in an unknown location,” and concluded their search efforts on March 13, 1968.
For more information on the ongoing efforts to locate the missing B-52, visit the B-52 Bomber Down website at https://b52bomberdown.org/.
Murphy and his fellow volunteers are also part of Project Recover, a nonprofit dedicated to helping locate and repatriate Americans who go MIA. To learn more, visit https://www.projectrecover.org/.
Banel also hosts the Unsolved Histories podcast series, which has featured episodes on both Flight 293 and the missing B-52 among many other cases. To listen to the podcasts, visit https://kslpodcasts.com/podcast/unsolved-histories/.
