An American pilot who vanished during a Vietnam War-era espionage mission has been officially recognized nearly six decades later, as per officials' announcement on Monday.
John C.G. Kerr, hailing from Florida, was 35 years old when he went missing in 1967. Kerr was in control of an attack aircraft on a "solo nighttime armed reconnaissance mission" over Laos on August 22, 1967, as stated in a news release by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Following the mission, he did not return and failed to make contact via radio, prompting U.S. forces to conduct an "extensive electronic and visual search" of the area he had patrolled.
Although neither Kerr nor the aircraft was located, a report from the New China News Agency on the same day mentioned that an American aircraft had been downed, as per the DPAA.
On June 4, Kerr was officially declared as killed in action.
The DPAA did not disclose the specifics of how Kerr was identified, but the agency commonly utilizes DNA analysis and other scientific advancements to examine the recoverable remains of deceased soldiers. Since 2021, the DPAA has been executing the Vietnam War Identification Project, a dedicated initiative to identify missing soldiers linked to the war.
Out of the 1,500 missing personnel from the Vietnam War, approximately 1,000 are considered "recoverable." These individuals are the primary focus of the ongoing identification project.
Currently, the project is handling "170 active accessions... believed to contain possible human remains." These accessions consist of "very small bone fragments" that are highly degraded. However, advancements in technology have made it possible to conduct DNA and isotope testing on these fragments in order to determine their origins. The DPAA stated that the accessions are compared against DNA samples from family members that are kept on record as reference points.
