MIA Academy Grad Laid To Rest
A 1963 Air Force Academy graduate who was Missing In Action during the Vietnam War was laid to rest Saturday in his hometown of Emporium, Penn., with full military honors. A funeral parade was conducted in St. Marys, Penn., as Clark’s remains were escorted to his hometown of Emporium for an Oct. 22 burial service.
Capt. Thomas E. Clark was 29 when he went missing in action after being shot down Feb. 8, 1969. He was assigned to the 37th Tactical Fighter Wing, flying F-100D Super Sabres out of Phu Cat Air Base, South Vietnam, with the wing’s 416th Tactical Fighter Squadron.
On his final combat sortie, his four-ship formation of F-100s was engaging an anti-aircraft artillery position in Savannakhet Province, Laos, when his aircraft was struck by enemy fire and crashed. The three other American pilots on the mission did not see a parachute or any other signs of Clark. Immediate search and rescue missions were not able to locate the crash site.
Clark was declared MIA. He was posthumously promoted to the rank of Major, and declared dead in 1973.
In 1991, and again in 1992, joint U.S./Lao People’s Democratic Republic teams investigated the area of the crash and recovered aircraft wreckage and military equipment.
The teams also conducted interviews with locals who reported witnessing the crash. Local Laotians gave the investigators two military identification tags that identified Clark, and human remains, which had been recovered from the site shortly after the crash. In 2009, an additional excavation of the site recovered dental remains which also helped to identify Clark.
Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command were able to use dental analysis to help identify Clark.
Today more than 1,600 Americans remain unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. More than 900 servicemen have been accounted for from that conflict, and returned to their families for burial with military honors since 1973.
