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Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways.
Speaker 1: I am Steve as usual, joined by den Go and
Speaker 1: once again we have a mystery seventies sexually actually continuing
Speaker 1: to present day, though well it is, it is continuing
Speaker 1: to present day. It was actually going to say it's
Speaker 1: a first for us, as we haven't really done a
Speaker 1: Vietnam War mystery before. And actually there's a lot of
Speaker 1: interesting Vietnam War mysteries out there, there are, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why we've avoided it, Probably because the Vietnam
Speaker 1: War is a bit of a third rail, you know,
Speaker 1: it's at that electrified rail for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: even still today. It's similar to doing you know, shows
Speaker 1: about that are circling around nine eleven or you know
Speaker 1: things like that. So I'm going to give the caveat
Speaker 1: in the beginning. Is Devin always love to say, this
Speaker 1: show is not necessarily about the basis and everything that
Speaker 1: happened in the war. It's going to be about our subjects,
Speaker 1: one very specific incident in the war. Similarly, if you
Speaker 1: love the Vietnam War, we're not going to do a
Speaker 1: good job explaining it. No, we don't email us telling
Speaker 1: us that we're bad at history, because we know we
Speaker 1: know really bad for a long long time. I sometimes
Speaker 1: I read how long it is, I'm like that was
Speaker 1: Oh god. Okay, so let's let's jump right into the story. Okay,
Speaker 1: shall we do that? I guess? Yeah? All right, So
Speaker 1: our stories the starts um maybe on the of January three,
Speaker 1: which for people who do know their history, especially around Vietnam,
Speaker 1: we'll know that that is the day that the Paris
Speaker 1: Piece Accords were signed to end the war slash, conflict, slash,
Speaker 1: whatever other thing people called it that was going on
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. Now, of course, the Piece Accords were intended
Speaker 1: to end that conflict. Now, whether it did or not,
Speaker 1: or how that went about, that's a whole another ball
Speaker 1: of wax. Yeah, there is. But I say that our
Speaker 1: story might start on that day, but we're not really
Speaker 1: positive for reasons that will come out later on. Our
Speaker 1: story mainly those starts on the fourth of February seventy three.
Speaker 1: That is when a US Air Force e C forty seven,
Speaker 1: operating under the call signed Baron fifty two, Yeah, took
Speaker 1: off from Uban, Thailand at eleven o'clock at night. The
Speaker 1: plane and crew went about their mission, and you know,
Speaker 1: all was well for them for a little while, and
Speaker 1: then they failed to make their required radio contact at
Speaker 1: two a m. At which point in search and rescue
Speaker 1: effort was launched, but it would be three days before
Speaker 1: the wreckage would be found crashed into the mountain side
Speaker 1: in the Jungles of Laos. The plane, when it was
Speaker 1: found owned, was upside down, its wings were shorn off,
Speaker 1: the rear portion of the plane was pretty destroyed because
Speaker 1: it had it been on fire. Yeah, yeah, they pretty
Speaker 1: large fire. Problem of course is that at this time
Speaker 1: in Laos, in that area, this is part of the
Speaker 1: human trail, so that even though the hostilities are not
Speaker 1: supposed to be happening, there's still enemy forces around. You're
Speaker 1: not talking just North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese communists, and yeah, everybody,
Speaker 1: everybody's around, and nobody likes the Americans, which big shocker
Speaker 1: happens all the time in situations like this, So search
Speaker 1: and rescue efforts. They launch a mission on the ninth
Speaker 1: of February and four men repel out of a helicopter
Speaker 1: to the ground to inspect the craft, and their plan
Speaker 1: is to confirm its identity and then identify and if possible,
Speaker 1: recover the bodies of the crew. At the same time,
Speaker 1: they're also task with destroying any sense of equipment that
Speaker 1: they might find has survived the crash, because this particular plane,
Speaker 1: as we'll talk about, has some very um some covert
Speaker 1: radio sniffing technology on it, which was very important to
Speaker 1: the U. S. Military. But these four men they get
Speaker 1: down there and they are able to They're only able
Speaker 1: to spend forty minutes total at the site. That in
Speaker 1: turn includes the time repelling out of and repelling back
Speaker 1: up into the helicopter, so they're not on the ground
Speaker 1: but for maybe twenty or thirty minutes total. They're looking
Speaker 1: around and they can get into the cockpit of the plane.
Speaker 1: Did they get in or they just look in the windows,
Speaker 1: because I've heard from some accounts it looks like they
Speaker 1: just looked in they were It sounds to me they
Speaker 1: were able to get a short distance into it based
Speaker 1: on one of the bodies that they found that would
Speaker 1: have been partially behind the partition. So I think they
Speaker 1: did go in, now not very far, you know, probably
Speaker 1: not farther than the pilot's chair distance into the cab.
Speaker 1: It was. The wreck was very unstable, and that will
Speaker 1: play a part in the way they go about things.
Speaker 1: But when they get in there, they're able to identify
Speaker 1: the remains of four individuals. There's Captain George Spitz, he's
Speaker 1: the pilot, their second lieutenant several prim he was a
Speaker 1: co pilot. Captain Arthur Bollinger was the navigator. And then
Speaker 1: outside of the plane they also found the body of
Speaker 1: First Lieutenant Robert Bernard, and he was the third part Bernhard,
Speaker 1: thank you, my bad. What they didn't find, though, and
Speaker 1: this is important to our story, is that they did
Speaker 1: not find the other four members of the crew, which
Speaker 1: again that's what's going on here, because this plane had
Speaker 1: eight people on board, four in the front who were
Speaker 1: flying it, and four in the rear who were running
Speaker 1: the radio equipment. Well, the of the sorry to interrupt,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a back of the plane anymore, right, Well,
Speaker 1: there was to a degree. There was, to a degree,
Speaker 1: it wasn't fully intact because of the fire and the crashes.
Speaker 1: The tail had been ripped off, Like this wreck was
Speaker 1: really really unstable. Yeah, yeah, especially if they come down
Speaker 1: very hard. So what the mystery here is, of course,
Speaker 1: is that if they didn't see the men the bodies
Speaker 1: of the men at the back of the plane, did
Speaker 1: they actually die in the plane the crash, or were
Speaker 1: they actually able to bail out before the plane went down,
Speaker 1: and if so, what then happened to them? Uh? And
Speaker 1: there there's a lot of events that happened after the
Speaker 1: after the plane initially disappears from radio contact that makes
Speaker 1: some people think that maybe they did get out. And
Speaker 1: we'll walk through all of that, but let's stop for
Speaker 1: a second and let's roll back to the very beginning
Speaker 1: of the story, because that's the general synopsis of why
Speaker 1: this is a mystery. Okay, Sis, you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: long winded guy. According to the Internet. Didn't your mom
Speaker 1: teach you to be the sinct? Actually I met your mom.
Speaker 1: Never mind, I was about to say, if you really
Speaker 1: want me to answer this question, because I could go
Speaker 1: on for a while. When Baron fifty two lifted off,
Speaker 1: it was only eight days after the Paris Peace Accords
Speaker 1: had officially gone into effect, but the US military, being
Speaker 1: not the most trusting organization out there, didn't actually stop
Speaker 1: its covert activities. Yeah. Yeah, well, and and officially, I
Speaker 1: have to guess or unofficially, I'm sure that they're like, well, listen,
Speaker 1: you know, we need to keep an eye on the
Speaker 1: Communist People's Party of Vietnam and and find out what's
Speaker 1: going on. Just in case they're, you know, gonna pull
Speaker 1: a fast one on us and break the rules. That's
Speaker 1: usually happens with C So it was makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense for contact. Remember it's eight days. I mean
Speaker 1: when bearfits two left, it was only eight days. It
Speaker 1: wasn't as if this was the first time a ceasefire
Speaker 1: had been called and both sides had broken them before.
Speaker 1: So things like this might be why those those things
Speaker 1: got broken in the past. But if you want to
Speaker 1: kind of kind of keep it, see if they're actually
Speaker 1: abiding by it or not before you pull all your
Speaker 1: troops out. Yeah. Yeah, so Baron fifty two itself, though,
Speaker 1: Bear fifty two is a modified C forty seven aircraft,
Speaker 1: and people who listen to this show regularly may actually
Speaker 1: remember that plane from such great hits as Skytrain. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, train, skytrain, I did say, skytrain. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: modified d C three great great great planes. Yeah, except
Speaker 1: when they crash. Yeah. Well, And for people who don't
Speaker 1: who may not remember that great hit, like Joe said,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a d C three, it's it's a
Speaker 1: two engine prop plane. It was. It usually was, or
Speaker 1: at least in the beginning, was meant to be hauled
Speaker 1: hauling cargo, but then they started using it at times
Speaker 1: to haul troops. This particular plane though, it is called
Speaker 1: an EC forty seven because the back end of it
Speaker 1: is crammed full of electronics equipment. So I mean that's
Speaker 1: the the simple version of what the E stands for.
Speaker 1: And it had four radio stations that each had individual
Speaker 1: man operating said radio to be listening in on whoever
Speaker 1: it was that they were following from the sky. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was. Actually it was like they had a lot
Speaker 1: of rd F units in it, and so they could actually,
Speaker 1: like you were cruising along anyway, they could get a
Speaker 1: fix on somebody, get a bearing, and then just cruise
Speaker 1: about a hundred miles down to get another fix and
Speaker 1: then triangulate, and that's where the bombers go. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's like pretty clever. Well, And in this particular plane,
Speaker 1: their job was on this particular night was they were
Speaker 1: posedly because of munitions fire that they had been taking
Speaker 1: anti aircraft fire they've been taking these planes that started
Speaker 1: flying at about ten thousand feet. But they would also
Speaker 1: then go over the border, you know, head to Louse
Speaker 1: and the border of Vietnam, and they were tracking a
Speaker 1: convoy of tanks, so they were listening to them to
Speaker 1: try and figure out how far they were actually going
Speaker 1: and were they just maneuvering around or were they actually
Speaker 1: haul and tail heading south to continue the campaigns. That
Speaker 1: was their particular mission on this particular night. Now, the
Speaker 1: plane was, as I said, had eight, was staffed by
Speaker 1: eight people. So the men in the or the men
Speaker 1: in the rear, which they often would get called the
Speaker 1: rear enders, which is just an odd way to put it,
Speaker 1: but it makes sense. They were all part of the
Speaker 1: security squadron. Off the tongue. I've never I don't remember
Speaker 1: ever seeing military numbers that were more than three digits.
Speaker 1: Shocked to see that. You never heard of the fighting
Speaker 1: sixty Well, I must not watch enough movies. Um. The
Speaker 1: guys that were in the front of the plane, they
Speaker 1: were part of the three hundred sixty one Tactical Electronic
Speaker 1: Warfare Squadron. I remember them. Yeah, basically a little more okay,
Speaker 1: but basically, like I said before, the division is four
Speaker 1: men in the back radio operators, four men in the
Speaker 1: front flying, the navigating. The men who are operating the
Speaker 1: surveillance equipment on this flight are Sergeant Todd Melton, Sergeant
Speaker 1: Joseph Mattajov, Sergeant Peter Cressman, and Sergeant Dale Brandenburg that
Speaker 1: particular night, Like I said, they were supposed to be
Speaker 1: following a convoy of tanks, that we're traveling along the
Speaker 1: human trail. And just I realized when I started doing
Speaker 1: the research for this, so you guys know, I'm going
Speaker 1: to Vietnam next year, right, So I started reading about
Speaker 1: Vietnam and one of the things I discovered is when
Speaker 1: it comes to geography, this happens all the time on
Speaker 1: this show. I'm an idiot. Turns out what I know
Speaker 1: about Vietnam I learned from Good Morning Vietnam. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we don't learn geography very well in America because
Speaker 1: I had it in my head that the Ho Chi
Speaker 1: Minh Trail was an actual road and it's no, it
Speaker 1: was like this this mile, yeah, this mini mile wide
Speaker 1: swap that people would move through, and it jumped to
Speaker 1: the border of not from Vietnam to Louse and eventually
Speaker 1: into Cambodia. Like I just always in my head thought
Speaker 1: it was, you know, like the main interstate or something stupid,
Speaker 1: which makes no sense, but that's what It would have
Speaker 1: been quite easy to interdict all that stuff. In retrospect,
Speaker 1: i'd be like this, But for anybody else who might
Speaker 1: have been under that misconception, I just wanted to be
Speaker 1: here to help cleared up so you don't fail from
Speaker 1: my foolishness. Yeah, jeez, guys, yeah, together, I knew all
Speaker 1: of that. Okay, good, very good with de Vietnam Vet,
Speaker 1: you know, he knows this stuff. It's true. By the way,
Speaker 1: it should also be said about the Hotiban Trail is
Speaker 1: an area of northeast Laos that was extremely rugged. In fact,
Speaker 1: hardly anybody lived. There's another reason it made a great
Speaker 1: smuggling sort of thing because there were no villagers that
Speaker 1: could impour them on your movements or anything like that.
Speaker 1: It's so rugged, some mountainous that really you couldn't have
Speaker 1: a usable farm or anything like that up there, So
Speaker 1: really nobody lived up there. That's why it was full
Speaker 1: of fighters and guerrillas who were on both sides of
Speaker 1: the campaign, because yeah, it was just a great place
Speaker 1: to hide. Yeah, it's the way that communications were set
Speaker 1: up for Barren fifty two. Yeah, because after you know,
Speaker 1: of course they're flying up and down, they're following, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're following this this train of tanks on the Hoteman Trail.
Speaker 1: But part of their their protocol was that they had
Speaker 1: to on the radio communicate with command every thirty minutes,
Speaker 1: and that was done on the hour in the half hour,
Speaker 1: and they were doing that as normal. At about one
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning, they called in and reported to Moonbeam,
Speaker 1: which was the name of the air command control center
Speaker 1: that they were reporting to, which was another airplane, which
Speaker 1: was another airplane that they had been fired upon, but
Speaker 1: they hadn't been hit. They then also reported at one
Speaker 1: forty that they again had been fired at, but again
Speaker 1: had not been hit. And this time when they were
Speaker 1: fired at, if I remember correctly, it was actually radar
Speaker 1: controlled anti aircraft guns that were shooting at them. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't some bozo on a gun just firing These
Speaker 1: were you know, yeah, yeah, they're much more accurate, or
Speaker 1: can be more accurate. Um. So at this point, everything
Speaker 1: is fine, They're over the Ochman Trail, they haven't been hit.
Speaker 1: And then two o'clock comes along and BEARN fifty two
Speaker 1: does not make its scheduled call. What happened? Well, as
Speaker 1: we know, they crashed. Joe. Oh yeah, okay, sorry, I
Speaker 1: forget so fast it's okay, it's all right. It's it's
Speaker 1: hot in here today. He's having that effect. I mean,
Speaker 1: the sweat is dripping off of me and it's disgusting,
Speaker 1: and I apologize it is I'm shiny um. So so
Speaker 1: very quickly, search and rescue efforts are launched and the
Speaker 1: other aircraft that are in the area begin to look
Speaker 1: for Barren fifty two, and I'm actually though they should
Speaker 1: have they I'm surprised they didn't see him, because if
Speaker 1: that plane burned as hot as they say it did,
Speaker 1: it should have been a pretty bright spot in the
Speaker 1: jungle to see. But regardless, nobody found Barren fifty two
Speaker 1: on that first night. Yeah, well it's a lot of
Speaker 1: area too, so I mean, I'm sure they didn't. You know,
Speaker 1: it is sure that that is a very good point,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I don't know. You can usually see big fires.
Speaker 1: I mean again, I'm not you know, since I actually
Speaker 1: I am not familiar with Vietnam at all, really rugged
Speaker 1: and mountainous, so that they're in a little valley and
Speaker 1: there's a little hill or mountain between you train that
Speaker 1: goes up in that and I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was a clear night or not. You know, because if
Speaker 1: it was a clear knight, you would expect you could
Speaker 1: see a column of smoke, you would think, But if
Speaker 1: it wasn't. If it was and they went down to
Speaker 1: two a m. So you wouldn't really see smoke at
Speaker 1: that time in the morning. If it was, if there
Speaker 1: was a moon out, you probably Oh, yeah, I guess, okay,
Speaker 1: But anyway, the point of the matter is they didn't
Speaker 1: see them. But it's weird. But it's weird that maybe
Speaker 1: not the same night though, another surveillance craft which was
Speaker 1: flying over the South China Sea, so this is directly
Speaker 1: to the east's couple hundred miles because it's out over
Speaker 1: open water. Um, this plane picks up a radio communication
Speaker 1: that seemed to point to the fact that the men
Speaker 1: in the back of the plane, that the crew in
Speaker 1: the rear had actually been able to bail out or
Speaker 1: get out of the plane, but as soon as they
Speaker 1: hit the ground almost they were captured by the Vietnamese.
Speaker 1: Now these are these are coded communications. Yeah, and by
Speaker 1: the way, do you know what time that message was received?
Speaker 1: I will be honest, they do not. In here is
Speaker 1: why Joe, is that I have seen it reported as
Speaker 1: anything from to thirty in the morning to five o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning to eight o'clock in the morning. I
Speaker 1: have seen it reported all over and I I've found
Speaker 1: a bunch of you know, government reports and documents and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and none of them actually said the
Speaker 1: freaking time on them. Frustrating. Yeah, so even in terry time,
Speaker 1: even in military time, sid stuff, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: have no idea what time it was. No the time
Speaker 1: is reported all over. I'm I'm willing to go with
Speaker 1: you know, let's just say five o'clock, because that would
Speaker 1: make sense for enough time to have transpired for men
Speaker 1: to have bailed out of a plane and then been
Speaker 1: captured and then somebody making a radio communic a the
Speaker 1: I mean, for me, the real question is, right, it's
Speaker 1: never been reported that it was like midnight, right, it
Speaker 1: wasn't before this crash happened. It's always, even if it's
Speaker 1: just even a half hour after, it's always after the
Speaker 1: crash happened. And that I think is the important part.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily so much, really important point would be great
Speaker 1: to be able to say, yeah, okay, reasonably there was
Speaker 1: that amount of time, but realistically, as long as it
Speaker 1: happened afterwards, we can give credence to it, so a
Speaker 1: little bit. That's a good point. And so, like I said,
Speaker 1: this is these are coded communications from the Vietnamese army.
Speaker 1: So what we've got is we've got American men who
Speaker 1: are translating a coded message in another language. So and
Speaker 1: they're picking it up while in an airplane. So that well,
Speaker 1: I'm saying this because that means that the communication isn't
Speaker 1: always the clearest reception. And the guy who first met
Speaker 1: took this, who heard it, he jotted it down and
Speaker 1: wrote it down. It was then recorded, and it was
Speaker 1: also recorded onto tape. That tape was then brought back
Speaker 1: to some command center I presume, where it was again
Speaker 1: listened to and a second person was able to uh
Speaker 1: code it or decode it. And what happens here is
Speaker 1: we get two different versions of the message. So here's
Speaker 1: well the translations, and you know, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. We'll talk about that a minute, but let
Speaker 1: me give you the actual messages. The first versions as
Speaker 1: Group to seventeen is holding four pilots captive and the
Speaker 1: group is requesting orders concerning what to do with them.
Speaker 1: The second translator comes up with presently Group to ten
Speaker 1: or sometimes you'll see it said group to ten B.
Speaker 1: But presently group to ten has four pirates. They are
Speaker 1: going there's a gap from four toe that is the
Speaker 1: word to not the number two so and and that's
Speaker 1: where it exists. Now, the problem with this, this log
Speaker 1: or this radio capture is what the military would do
Speaker 1: is they would have the second guy go through it
Speaker 1: and confirm it or correct it, and then they would
Speaker 1: send the tape back onto another plane to be recorded
Speaker 1: over again. So it does not exist anymore. But historically
Speaker 1: more credence is given to a second translation in a
Speaker 1: situation like this than a first translation. Is that correct,
Speaker 1: you would think, But I'm just wondering. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of the politically correct way to say this. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of fighting and debate over which one is
Speaker 1: correct right in this particular instance. But I just didn't
Speaker 1: know if there was like a historic record of I'm
Speaker 1: sure this happened all the time, right that the translation,
Speaker 1: and so I just didn't know if the general consensus
Speaker 1: was we're going with what the second guy who's not
Speaker 1: in an airplane in a stressful situation says, or okay,
Speaker 1: So officially, the Air Force logs go with what the
Speaker 1: second guys said. Okay, because the second guy I actually
Speaker 1: did get a chance to listen to it more than once, right, yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the first guy is doing it on the
Speaker 1: flyded so he's just trying to do it as quick
Speaker 1: as in an airplane and could get shot at any second. Yes, yes, exactly. Okay,
Speaker 1: so but that's I mean, I'm just trying to give
Speaker 1: historic context to which one generally would be given more.
Speaker 1: I believe the second one. As we said, so okay,
Speaker 1: now as we know the plane it's wouldn't actually be
Speaker 1: found until the seventh of February, and then, like we
Speaker 1: talked about before, that wreckage wouldn't be inspected until two
Speaker 1: days later, which was the ninth of February. And the
Speaker 1: search and rescue team who were who repelled out of
Speaker 1: the Jolly Green Giant said that they couldn't you're laughing,
Speaker 1: but that's what they called those big giant green helicopters.
Speaker 1: I love that. But they said that they didn't go
Speaker 1: into the fuselage of the plane because they were worried
Speaker 1: that it wasn't stable enough, and they were also kind
Speaker 1: of worried about booby traps that too. They had also
Speaker 1: considered putting a rope around it and having the helicopter
Speaker 1: lifted up to try and flip it over, but they
Speaker 1: didn't believe that structurally it would stand that and it
Speaker 1: would probably just crumble and be a waste of time.
Speaker 1: So they couldn't do a whole lot. And part of
Speaker 1: the reason that it was so unstable is when Baron
Speaker 1: fifty two went down, it had about five was a
Speaker 1: fuel on board. That's a lot of fuel to burn that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that melts metal. That's one of the problem.
Speaker 1: Is it destroys, It melts people met Yes, it does bars. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's good to know. But but of course the important
Speaker 1: point here is that because and this again, this is
Speaker 1: the thing that people gravitate to, because they never went
Speaker 1: into the rear of the plane. They never actually saw
Speaker 1: any bodies. Now, just to give you us a little
Speaker 1: bit of context here, the bodies of the men that
Speaker 1: they found in the front they were badly burned. They
Speaker 1: were really badly burned. But was it no vax? Was
Speaker 1: that the kind of suit? I their flight suits might
Speaker 1: have been it, I think, thank you, it was. It's
Speaker 1: flame retardant flight suits. The flight suits are what kept
Speaker 1: their bodies from being entirely consumed by flames. They didn't
Speaker 1: cover everything. No, No, it's just like the black box
Speaker 1: in the plane. Why don't they just make the whole
Speaker 1: plane out of it? We have this conversation every time. Well,
Speaker 1: here's a question with the with the rear enders have
Speaker 1: also been wearing flight suits like that. I cannot say,
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I would
Speaker 1: presume that they would be wearing flight suits as well,
Speaker 1: but I would and not just in regular jumpsuits. But
Speaker 1: god knows, I don't have the military history background to
Speaker 1: be able to answer that, unfortunately. Yeah. Um oh. So
Speaker 1: here's the other thing is that the search and rescuers
Speaker 1: when they got on the ground, they said that even
Speaker 1: though the plane had been consumed by fire, when they
Speaker 1: looked at where the rear jump door was, this is
Speaker 1: the rear door of the plane. The people climbed in
Speaker 1: and out right, and from looking at these doors it
Speaker 1: and I might be wrong, and if I'm wrong, I apologize,
Speaker 1: But appeared to me it was an opening that was
Speaker 1: on hinges. But there was also a kickout portion of
Speaker 1: that door that in an emergency you could just punch
Speaker 1: it out there is. Yeah, it's actually actually the frame
Speaker 1: one is actually just kind of it really is just
Speaker 1: kind of a frame. Yeah, that the paratroute door that
Speaker 1: you kick out is almost Well, the point is, even
Speaker 1: even in that much heat, a portion of that kick
Speaker 1: out door should have been there. They should have seen it,
Speaker 1: and when they looked at the plane they didn't see that.
Speaker 1: So this is corroboration from search and rescue that the
Speaker 1: door is missing, which means maybe the guys weren't there,
Speaker 1: or maybe it's like critically failed and blew out because
Speaker 1: the plane was on fire and pressure was weird. Maybe
Speaker 1: possible as well. People will also say, well, those search
Speaker 1: and rescuers, they didn't find any of the sensitive radio
Speaker 1: equipment that was in the back of the plane, So
Speaker 1: that's proof that the guys because keep in mind, these guys'
Speaker 1: job in the event the plane is going down is
Speaker 1: to to take the equipment with them and destroy it
Speaker 1: so the enemy can't get it. But key point, if
Speaker 1: they don't go in the back of the lane, they
Speaker 1: can't confirm if that equipment is actually there. So that's
Speaker 1: a clane that always frustrates me when I read it. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the things I wonder about too, is before
Speaker 1: they left a day, like you know, like toss a
Speaker 1: few thromigrainade into the plane to make sure that equipment
Speaker 1: was totally totally fried. I would imagine that they would
Speaker 1: not have done that because if if they jumped, the
Speaker 1: plane was still in the air, which means the men
Speaker 1: piloting the aircrafts oh no, I don't know. Search. I
Speaker 1: don't think Search and rescue did anything. But they recovered
Speaker 1: one body or partial remains of one body, and then
Speaker 1: they had to boogie. I understand their self preservation, because
Speaker 1: I didn't understand they could also have been shot down
Speaker 1: or things like that. But I would assume that if
Speaker 1: it was so important that the enemy not gain access
Speaker 1: to this proprietary covert technology, if they weren't sure that
Speaker 1: it was not there or already destroyed, they would have
Speaker 1: done something destroy it. So I guess for me, even
Speaker 1: though we can say like they didn't go into the
Speaker 1: back of the airplane, it didn't look like the back
Speaker 1: of the airplane was really intact that much. From the
Speaker 1: really grainy pictures you find online, Um that are I
Speaker 1: think all aerial, right, Yeah, it's one aerial photo, but
Speaker 1: you can hardly tell, but it does look like to
Speaker 1: me you can kind of see the front of it,
Speaker 1: and then the back of it just looks like it's
Speaker 1: blown out. And maybe your impression of that was different.
Speaker 1: But so I don't know that there was necessarily a
Speaker 1: back to go into. They could have done a visual
Speaker 1: search of So, well, here's what is to get on
Speaker 1: the ground. One of them or one or two post
Speaker 1: up his guards and then only so only two of
Speaker 1: them are actually searching the plane, and they spend about
Speaker 1: fifteen plus minutes attempting to extract one of the bodies
Speaker 1: from the cockpit. So I mean that's not don't even
Speaker 1: have a lot of time. No, that's not counting the
Speaker 1: time that they dropped. So they've already expended fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: It's only two of them. I don't know that they
Speaker 1: really were able to do too much snooping around. But
Speaker 1: you're right, that plane was a total disaster. As they said,
Speaker 1: it's upside down, the wings are shorn off, the tail
Speaker 1: is broken off, and something like a hundred yards behind
Speaker 1: the wreck. So they may have looked at it and went, no,
Speaker 1: nothing could have survived that fire, and there's no reason
Speaker 1: to even bother to look for the equipment. That's a
Speaker 1: very valid point. I don't know. I just react to
Speaker 1: people saying and they knew that it wasn't there because
Speaker 1: they don't actually know. Yeah, I've heard the story that
Speaker 1: they say that the parachutes were gone and the equipment
Speaker 1: was gone, But in the official thing, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's I think I'm willing to say it
Speaker 1: was functionally gone. Ye may not have physically not been there,
Speaker 1: but it may it probably just still they sat granades,
Speaker 1: and I would agree with that. That's why we're going
Speaker 1: to be a a zombie apocalypse team. But I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: you know, to me there, I cannot imagine if it
Speaker 1: was as sensitive as it seems like it was, that
Speaker 1: their main directive would have been find the bodies. That rather,
Speaker 1: their main objective would have been, hey, make sure that well,
Speaker 1: no that That's what I'm saying before, is that they
Speaker 1: they had it was it was multiple responsibilities. Was recover
Speaker 1: the equipment if possible or destroy it, recover and identify
Speaker 1: the bodies if possible, recover them alive, right of course,
Speaker 1: and look for a survivors. So, but this was they
Speaker 1: were doing all of this at the time yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So they go, they look, they recover one set of remains,
Speaker 1: and initially the U. S. Air Force lists the four
Speaker 1: men that are in the rear of the plane as
Speaker 1: missing in action. And then several days later, and by
Speaker 1: the way, this is after they've can tacked to the
Speaker 1: families and said, listen, this is what happens to your son.
Speaker 1: We believe they're missing an action. We don't have anything
Speaker 1: to lead us to believe anything different. And the I've
Speaker 1: read the requirements from the U. S. Air Force that
Speaker 1: says they actually air on the side of missing in
Speaker 1: action rather than killed an action unless they absolutely positively
Speaker 1: can confirm somebody saying, you don't want to list somebody
Speaker 1: as dead. That isn't the paperwork alone to get somebody
Speaker 1: back alive. But so so these guys come out, the
Speaker 1: Air Force says, this is what's going on. And then
Speaker 1: suddenly eight days later, I think it's eight days after,
Speaker 1: which is weird because it's the same number of days. Anyway,
Speaker 1: eight days later they come out and they say, oh,
Speaker 1: got no, no, those those four men they were definitely
Speaker 1: killed in action. They were definitely killed when that plane
Speaker 1: went down. And that leaves a funny taste and a
Speaker 1: lot of people's mouths because they were very the word
Speaker 1: I've seen it described as hasty, were very hasty in
Speaker 1: that decision, and things we're going to talk about it
Speaker 1: in the theory section may explain why they felt that
Speaker 1: people feel that that was such a hasty decision. So
Speaker 1: we are now done with the story, so as always,
Speaker 1: we need to go into theories. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: the first theory. That first theory is that per the
Speaker 1: United States Air Force and all of its reporting, they
Speaker 1: told the truth and the men did actually die in
Speaker 1: the crash. Surprising, I guess. Well, and yeah, let's let's
Speaker 1: run through it because I mean, the official report says
Speaker 1: all eight of them died in the crash, and they
Speaker 1: say that there are several things that confirm this. There's
Speaker 1: first off is the fact that there was no radio
Speaker 1: contact from the crew whatsoever, and they would have expected that.
Speaker 1: And let me clarify what they're talking about here, because first,
Speaker 1: these men are so well trained that is expected that
Speaker 1: as the plane is descending, you know, losing flight, falling
Speaker 1: out of the sky, losing altitude, there's the word I'm looking. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's descending if it were cabled capable of having
Speaker 1: made contact or sent out, you know, a broadcast of
Speaker 1: some kind, whether it be from the pilot or the
Speaker 1: men in the back of the plane. That should have
Speaker 1: happened automatically. Somebody should have said made a we're going down.
Speaker 1: It makes a lot of sense because you want them
Speaker 1: to know you're going down so they can come look
Speaker 1: for you right now. Yeah, absolutely, um. And also I mean,
Speaker 1: also just to you know, drive home a point. They
Speaker 1: radioed in every time they almost got hit, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: they checked in every half hour, but more than that,
Speaker 1: you know, at thirty they said, uh, just got missed.
Speaker 1: At forty before they had to check in again, they said,
Speaker 1: just got missed again, and then silence. So you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody's shooting at them, they're going to if they're
Speaker 1: radioing to say somebody's shooting at us and missing us,
Speaker 1: they're going to radio and say oh. Now that people
Speaker 1: do say, well, of course, you know, well something happened
Speaker 1: and the engines died, but of course the plane had
Speaker 1: batteries on it. The radios would have worked. Even if
Speaker 1: both engines had literally fallen off of the plane, it
Speaker 1: still would have continued to have electricity. To be able
Speaker 1: to send a radio signal of some kind. The only
Speaker 1: thing I can think of here is that they may
Speaker 1: have tried to be sending radio signals, but I'm guessing
Speaker 1: that whatever hit them probably destroyed their antenna array. Now
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know enough if there is more,
Speaker 1: if there was a backup antenna. But it's like if
Speaker 1: it was literally meant to be picking up a radio signals,
Speaker 1: they brought something, But I don't know that they're necessarily
Speaker 1: broadcasting with the same equipment that they are listening with.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't want to run down that
Speaker 1: Alley did have a lot of different radio gear and
Speaker 1: a lot of antennas on those planes, right, So it's
Speaker 1: so it's it's hard to say. It's like Amelia Heart.
Speaker 1: You know that you're gonna have at least well, not
Speaker 1: like Amelia Heart, she had like one, Okay, okay, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have You're gonna want to have at least two,
Speaker 1: maybe three radios for communications purposes with bass, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh absolutely yeah. So the second kind of radio
Speaker 1: contact that was expected to be heard from these guys,
Speaker 1: if indeed they bailed out, was it should have been
Speaker 1: radio contact that was coming from what is known as
Speaker 1: air crew survival radios, and that is literally the hit
Speaker 1: a button and it just sends out an automated distress signal,
Speaker 1: Um help me something like. I mean, you know, it's
Speaker 1: if you ever seen that Owen Wilson movie Behind Enemy
Speaker 1: Lines and he's got the funny little radio find Me box.
Speaker 1: It's an early early version of what they show in
Speaker 1: that movie. And now I'm telling you to go see
Speaker 1: that movie. It's a great movie. I just thought Williams
Speaker 1: doing a non comedy. What are we talking about here?
Speaker 1: What the hell it happened? I'm sure it was some
Speaker 1: bad contract negotiation by his agent. I don't know, but
Speaker 1: he did. It will interest you all to know they
Speaker 1: have those in all of the inflatable life boats, very similar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and personal flotation devices. Yeah. They're they're a little handheld
Speaker 1: about size of Milwaukee talkie and you just flipped the switch.
Speaker 1: You don't have to do anything complicated and they go off.
Speaker 1: And if these guys had bailed out, according to the
Speaker 1: Air Force, they should have been broadcasting with these things
Speaker 1: right away. You assume they would, because it'd be the
Speaker 1: way they'd be found. Haven't a set up? There wouldn't you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Other things that the Air Force points out, they say
Speaker 1: the condition of the aircraft because, like I said, as
Speaker 1: we've talked about a couple of times, it was upside down,
Speaker 1: and they say they're pretty sure that that plane came
Speaker 1: in nose first, and the lack of any kind of
Speaker 1: skid marks through the jungle or anything nothing like that.
Speaker 1: It appears that it fell nose first vertically and hit
Speaker 1: and boom and then flopped over on its back. It
Speaker 1: could be like maybe a wing fell off or something
Speaker 1: like that. They went into a tail spin. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Air Force thinks that it went into a tail spin.
Speaker 1: And that's actually a really important thing because if the
Speaker 1: plane is in a tail spin, from what I understand
Speaker 1: it is, would be all but impossible for those guys
Speaker 1: in the rear of the plane to be able to
Speaker 1: punch out the jump door and then be able to
Speaker 1: jump out of that plane and clear it like they wouldn't.
Speaker 1: They shouldn't have been able to get out because either
Speaker 1: it's blowing, you know, spinning into the door. H that
Speaker 1: would you know, then create the air pressure you can't
Speaker 1: get away from. And I don't know that you'd want
Speaker 1: to jump it was spinning the other direction, because then
Speaker 1: that's just gonna throw you right into the propellers. I mean,
Speaker 1: this all sounds like really like logical reason. I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, for me, I would presume to just kind
Speaker 1: of address the fact that they, you know, took eight
Speaker 1: days to go from m I A to kill then action.
Speaker 1: I think you know, what you were saying is true
Speaker 1: that the Air Force is very tentative to just say
Speaker 1: military yeah, and so well people should be pretty tentative
Speaker 1: to just say if they're dead. But it really what
Speaker 1: it sounds like happened to me is, you know, they
Speaker 1: found that wreckage, and they said, okay, there's a possibility
Speaker 1: that maybe, you know, without having assessed anything, there's a
Speaker 1: possibility that maybe they bailed out. We did not conclusively
Speaker 1: find their bodies, so okay, and they went back and
Speaker 1: assessed it, and you know, came to this story where
Speaker 1: what the forensic evidence or whatever you know, said and realized, really,
Speaker 1: there's no plausible possibility that these men survived this crash
Speaker 1: and then moved them. Eight days is a reasonable amount
Speaker 1: of time to spend investigating something of this. I think
Speaker 1: I don't know that they actually investigated I mean for
Speaker 1: eight days though? Is the point here, Devan? But even
Speaker 1: that's what people get so peeved off about is that
Speaker 1: it wasn't as if for eight days a US Air
Speaker 1: Force group spent nothing but time looking at the data
Speaker 1: and saying, Okay, what exactly happened in giving a determination?
Speaker 1: It doesn't take eight days to look at this stuff, right,
Speaker 1: they can I clarify that it would be even more
Speaker 1: suspicious to a lot of people if like a day
Speaker 1: later they were like, well, just getting killed an action,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like they had to get
Speaker 1: all of the footage, they had to take statements, they
Speaker 1: had to probably like have a couple of experts, They
Speaker 1: had to really take the time to compile all of
Speaker 1: the evidence. It's not that I'm saying they're sitting there
Speaker 1: in a room for eight days, probably not even compiling
Speaker 1: evidence for eight days realistically, but that the process could
Speaker 1: have reasonably taken eight days, and that they could have
Speaker 1: said yep. But again what I was saying earlier is
Speaker 1: that there were there. Their manuals actually point out if
Speaker 1: you cannot confirm nobody laid eyes on what happened, you
Speaker 1: do not change them from M I A to K
Speaker 1: I a and that's what that's really what what sticks
Speaker 1: in the crawl of all of these families of these
Speaker 1: four men, and for I mean this was in nine
Speaker 1: seventy three. For five years, these families just lived with
Speaker 1: the understanding that their sons had died in the crash
Speaker 1: when the plane went down, until in eight somebody from
Speaker 1: the U. S. Air Force called them up to tell
Speaker 1: them that there was a possibility that the men had
Speaker 1: actually gotten out and been captured by the enemy, which
Speaker 1: is something we talked about in the beginning. So let's
Speaker 1: move into theory number two, which is they actually bailed
Speaker 1: out and we're captured, and we're captured. Exactly what happens.
Speaker 1: What's going on with this Well, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff going on in it. The basics of it are
Speaker 1: that Melton, Matta, Jov Cressman, and Brandon Burg, like we
Speaker 1: said before, they parachuted out and then we're immediately captured
Speaker 1: by the People's Army of Vietnam, and then those crewman
Speaker 1: would have been considered very valuable assets, not only to
Speaker 1: the Vietnamese, but to the good buddies of Vietnamese, the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union. They would have turned them over to them
Speaker 1: and they would have taken them back to the Moscow
Speaker 1: or wherever, and yeah, they would have. They would have
Speaker 1: gotten them out of the country because they're radio men,
Speaker 1: so they know US US Air Force codes and procedures.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of knowledge in them that you
Speaker 1: can see the Soviets really really wanting to have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to get their hands on. So that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of the general breakdown of the theory in the beginning.
Speaker 1: And then we'll get into our our you know, thickets
Speaker 1: of bits here. So we're gonna talk about that radio
Speaker 1: communication again, uh, it said, and I'll give it to
Speaker 1: you again. It says, Group to seventeen is holding four
Speaker 1: pie let's captive, and the group is requesting orders concerning
Speaker 1: what to do with them. And then the second version
Speaker 1: is presently group to ten has four pirates. They are
Speaker 1: going from forty four to ninety three. The things that
Speaker 1: people point out that are really interesting about that is
Speaker 1: that apparently the Vietnamese interchangeably used the words pilot and
Speaker 1: pirate all the time for guys flying planes. They considered
Speaker 1: them to be pirates, I guess is the reasoning. Well,
Speaker 1: I've heard also that they and this wasn't the Vietnamese.
Speaker 1: I thought it was like the oceans had captured these guys,
Speaker 1: they were going to turn them over to the Vietnamese.
Speaker 1: I was the impression that it was the Vietnamese that
Speaker 1: had done it, because it was on the Hotemen trail
Speaker 1: and therefore the Vietnamese army was flowing through there. It
Speaker 1: could have been I was thinking, well, we can agree
Speaker 1: with I just don't know, but I had heard that
Speaker 1: they used them and claysure like the word pirate could
Speaker 1: apply it to like bandits um and also just members
Speaker 1: of the opposition, like they were at the communist guerrillas
Speaker 1: operating in the area too, And apparently I heard they
Speaker 1: refer to them as pirates also, Yeah, so it was
Speaker 1: it was it was basically a word to describe the enemy,
Speaker 1: not just a particular group. And so if pilot and
Speaker 1: pirate or miss translator to miss decoded, that could lead
Speaker 1: to confusion, which again it's obviously led up to a
Speaker 1: whole bunch in here. Um. Let's see, we had at
Speaker 1: one point in the initial reading it was group to seventeen.
Speaker 1: In the second reading it was group to ten. People
Speaker 1: say that the difference phonetically in the language between two
Speaker 1: ten and to seventeen isn't isn't much, so it could
Speaker 1: easily have been miss translated. So there's something that people
Speaker 1: poke holes into it with. But really, what people always
Speaker 1: want to know about is, Okay, so what's up with
Speaker 1: the forty four to nine three? And that has been
Speaker 1: interpret quite a lot to mean kilometer markers along some
Speaker 1: kind of route along a road, whether it be an
Speaker 1: east west or north south road. People are saying, well,
Speaker 1: this means that what they're saying is that they were
Speaker 1: taking them from marker four kilometer marker forty four two
Speaker 1: kilometer marker nine three. But we don't know where that goes.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a hard, hard one. You know that
Speaker 1: those also could have been just like code numbers that
Speaker 1: meant like, you know, forty four ment alive, three meant dead,
Speaker 1: and it could have been that. Then yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: could have been a lot of different things. I mean,
Speaker 1: it may have been coded to the degree that whoever
Speaker 1: decoded it didn't decoded correctly. It may not have had
Speaker 1: the entire key. I don't know. I mean, I have
Speaker 1: no idea. I heard some of these. At least one
Speaker 1: of these messages was actually decode by a guy who's
Speaker 1: was Ocean was not his real primary language, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't that strong in it. Was a linguist, but I
Speaker 1: don't think it was this big language and so and
Speaker 1: so a lot of way that has been placed upon
Speaker 1: this guy's interpretation. Is he the second Is he the
Speaker 1: one who did the second interpretation? Yeah? And I can
Speaker 1: I had his name written down or something like that.
Speaker 1: I can't remember. You don't have it written anymore. But
Speaker 1: he is apparently the one that raised the stink and
Speaker 1: got the families involved in seventy So can you I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: can you just clarify for me here? This transmission was
Speaker 1: picked up by a plane pretty far away right over,
Speaker 1: so a couple hundred miles maybe. Yeah, let's say, okay,
Speaker 1: big question, what's how do we know this is even
Speaker 1: about this thing? We don't, okay, And that's a very
Speaker 1: good point to raise the fit from the U. S.
Speaker 1: Air Force, they say that the person who was monitoring
Speaker 1: the frequency that this original message came through on believed
Speaker 1: that all of the communication that he was listening to
Speaker 1: was actually coming out of um Vin City, which is
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty miles away four KOs from the
Speaker 1: site from where Barren fifty two went down. People say, well,
Speaker 1: that's an awfully long ways away to be related. I
Speaker 1: will use a grain of saualt here and say that
Speaker 1: doesn't really bother me so much, because it could have
Speaker 1: been somebody calling up the chain of command, who was
Speaker 1: then calling up the chain of command, who was then
Speaker 1: calling up the chain of commanding a game of telephone
Speaker 1: to get the message along. I'm I'm just saying that
Speaker 1: I could see that. I'm not saying that's a serious contention,
Speaker 1: but that is one of the problems with it that
Speaker 1: it's it's not from that very very close range to
Speaker 1: the crash site, but beyond beyond that, the there were
Speaker 1: other reasons that people believe they got out of the
Speaker 1: plane and they were captured. Right, Which parts are you
Speaker 1: talking about here, because I'm looking through my lips. Well now,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just talking about the door being missing
Speaker 1: in the parachutes being gone and all that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And were we through the debunking part yet? We want
Speaker 1: to go there yet? No? No, because there's a couple
Speaker 1: of things here that I find interesting that might explain
Speaker 1: why some of the stuff is going on. So one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that okay, so if these guys get
Speaker 1: out in there immediately captured, Remember that this is just
Speaker 1: about the time that the Paris Piece Accords have gone
Speaker 1: into effect, and one of the how god, it's not
Speaker 1: a stipulation, but one of the articles of the accords
Speaker 1: is that prisoners of war will be returned and the
Speaker 1: bodies of the dead shall be repatriated. You shall send
Speaker 1: them home. Both sides should be doing this, Okay, So
Speaker 1: this is this is what everybody wants to have happened.
Speaker 1: So if that's the case, and suddenly the US screws
Speaker 1: the pooge and drops a plane in the jungle, proving
Speaker 1: that it's doing what it's not supposed to do, you
Speaker 1: want to allow that to jeopardize the return of all
Speaker 1: those other guys. In other words, are you willing to
Speaker 1: forfeit these four for the other hundreds, if not thousands,
Speaker 1: and and and just to be clear, this is not
Speaker 1: you talking. This is what the People the Theory says. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we're not saying. It's that it's the
Speaker 1: trolley can un drum, right, do you sacrifice You've got
Speaker 1: the one person on the tracks that you care about
Speaker 1: in the twenty people the no on the on the
Speaker 1: other track, and do you like throw the switch. I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's a good question, especially on the possibility, right,
Speaker 1: it's not even it's not even uh we know for
Speaker 1: sure they're alive. It's a we think they might be live.
Speaker 1: So are we going to sacrifice? Are we going to
Speaker 1: get caught doing this thing? Or or are we going
Speaker 1: to get our you know, thousands of POWs back like
Speaker 1: which is but yeah, I mean, you know what, I
Speaker 1: know what you're saying. Yeah, though the you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think this thing would really would have jeopardized that.
Speaker 1: That's one problem I have with this series that oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, there's a lot of problems. What the what
Speaker 1: the US was doing over loud. So's what recon and
Speaker 1: all that stuff was not actually without actually wrong and
Speaker 1: really in violation of the accords anyway. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: I think they were supposed to be stopping all missions.
Speaker 1: And this is to me when I read this, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty blatant violation of stop what you're doing. Just
Speaker 1: where all things, I mean, like everybody is out, quit
Speaker 1: doing it, send everybody home. And here's all these guys
Speaker 1: at this air base that are still flying as if
Speaker 1: nothing happened. It was just eight guys going for a
Speaker 1: plane ride. Well, this was this was one of many, many,
Speaker 1: many planes that the US had in the air, which
Speaker 1: is why you don't that not that they know of
Speaker 1: it's just the one. Well, but they do because it
Speaker 1: could be communication because of the fact that I mean,
Speaker 1: think about this, So the Vietnamese or the Larations, they're
Speaker 1: shooting at these airplanes that they see overhead because because
Speaker 1: they're not supposed to be there, and they know they
Speaker 1: can't get in trouble for shooting one down because it's
Speaker 1: not supposed to be there in the first place. So
Speaker 1: you're gonna deny it. And that is why people also
Speaker 1: say that because the government knew that they shouldn't have
Speaker 1: had that plane in the air, they so hurriedly changed
Speaker 1: the status from m I A to k I A
Speaker 1: because they realized that they got their hand caught the
Speaker 1: cookie jar. And you you you know, like you said,
Speaker 1: it's that's that same conundrum. This is the problem I
Speaker 1: have with that explanation, though, is that is that you know,
Speaker 1: the U. S. Government didn't really get caught with his
Speaker 1: hand in the cookie jar, just there's a ceasefire, which
Speaker 1: means you stopped shooting at each other. It doesn't mean.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you stop paying attention to what
Speaker 1: the other side is doing. I'm not gonna I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna bait it. I felt I feel personally that I
Speaker 1: think it was in violation. But that's my personal thought,
Speaker 1: and I think that others may have felt that way
Speaker 1: according to this theory. That's somebody else in in command.
Speaker 1: I was worried about the same thing. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I think these people are wrong. But then you know,
Speaker 1: but so let's keep moving forward, so we don't beat
Speaker 1: a dead horse. Oh yeah, let's not do that. Let's
Speaker 1: move into what. I don't even know how to classify
Speaker 1: this next bit because it's it's kind of theory related,
Speaker 1: and it's I called it modern hinky nous because they okay, okay,
Speaker 1: so it's modern hinkiness. So okay, okay. So here's the thing.
Speaker 1: There's a piece of information that I haven't shared with
Speaker 1: our listeners that I know, you two known, I know,
Speaker 1: and that is that we went back to the crash
Speaker 1: side of baron fifty two. It just took us twenty
Speaker 1: years to get Yeah, so well, in actually they went
Speaker 1: ninety two and the Commission report came out in ninety three.
Speaker 1: It took them like eighteen months apparently to get it
Speaker 1: all figured out. But a Senate committee sent investigators to
Speaker 1: the site, and when they got to that site, they
Speaker 1: uncovered thirty one bone fragments and tooth fragment as well
Speaker 1: as zippers and other bits of fight gear. Uh, there
Speaker 1: was four corroded revolvers, you know, the woods gone. The
Speaker 1: medal is all corroded up. You can see the photos
Speaker 1: of these things online. They also found the d rings
Speaker 1: from eight parachutes. So they say that's evidence that the
Speaker 1: men couldn't have gotten out. But to be fair, that
Speaker 1: just means they probably didn't successfully make it to the ground.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean they didn't out of the plane. These
Speaker 1: were in the crash site. So but I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: like it just means they didn't take parachutes with them.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean they didn't. Oh yeah, they could have just
Speaker 1: said see if they could fly on their own. Actually,
Speaker 1: the parachutes a stored or they were stored in the
Speaker 1: after the plane, right across the from the entrance store
Speaker 1: and the entrance or exit, depending at your point of view.
Speaker 1: And they were in a bin and there were places
Speaker 1: in the bench for a dozen shoots. Yeah, like for yeah,
Speaker 1: for twelve, might as four is a after all? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: but that's the thing is that if if indeed there's
Speaker 1: only eight shoots, where's the d rings for the extras?
Speaker 1: That's that's the question. Well that yeah, yeah, and so.
Speaker 1: But but I mean, to some people, the presence of
Speaker 1: eight rings or d rings from eight parachutes proved that
Speaker 1: they couldn't have jumped. I mean, to other people, it
Speaker 1: doesn't prove that at all. Right, No, no, you're not,
Speaker 1: because people say they never went up with just the
Speaker 1: minimum number. They always had extras just just in case.
Speaker 1: Although you don't know, I mean that you know that
Speaker 1: they might not have had, like you know, that a
Speaker 1: full thing either. I don't know what I mean. They
Speaker 1: might have only had ten in there. I don't know. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: but but even it was only ten, that means they're
Speaker 1: still short. But so they get to the site, they
Speaker 1: find these d rings to prove that there was eight
Speaker 1: parachutes on board the plane when it went down. There's
Speaker 1: some other weird bits of hanky nous here, and that
Speaker 1: would be that one of the investigators, when he walked
Speaker 1: onto the site. He said he literally looked down and
Speaker 1: he found a dog tag sitting on the ground, exposed
Speaker 1: to the elements, right in front of him, and that
Speaker 1: belonged to Joe Matta Jov. The thing is is that
Speaker 1: it was in pristine condition. Uh you know, I mean
Speaker 1: it shouldn't have been. It had been there for twenty years.
Speaker 1: It should have suffered some kind of ill effects of
Speaker 1: the weather. I don't know. I guess there's some I
Speaker 1: guess for me. You know, he could be saying, like,
Speaker 1: and it was in pretty dang good condition. Have you
Speaker 1: seen the photo of it? It was it actually pristine? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was in green condition. I mean I've seen dog
Speaker 1: tags that guys war for years, you know, after combat mission,
Speaker 1: you know, guys do that. They just always wear their
Speaker 1: dog tags. And they were dirty and scarred and beat up,
Speaker 1: and they looked worse than the ones I saw in
Speaker 1: this photo. We didn't see very much compact. So playing
Speaker 1: a practical joke on these guys, Well, that's actually a
Speaker 1: really good point because it is not an unknown thing
Speaker 1: for people to see or figure out that families of
Speaker 1: men who are m I A Are coming to the
Speaker 1: area and fabric hate dog tags to sell to them.
Speaker 1: So that's not an uncommon thing, but the other not so.
Speaker 1: On the level bit here is supposedly these guys were
Speaker 1: they were flying a sanitized mission, meaning that they shouldn't
Speaker 1: have had their dog tags on and they shouldn't have
Speaker 1: had any kind of recognizable insignias on their flight suits.
Speaker 1: Have a question the hand, then, how did they identify
Speaker 1: the four pilots? How do they know that was who
Speaker 1: they were? Were their positions in the I believe it
Speaker 1: was the positions in the plane. Okay, believe that. But
Speaker 1: so that is the way they identified them based on
Speaker 1: their stations. Yes, so, for all we know, the rare
Speaker 1: endman could have been taking those positions, possibly realistically, just
Speaker 1: to be a totally slam slam into the ground and
Speaker 1: the four in the front or ejected right out the
Speaker 1: glass windshields in the front and the four just right
Speaker 1: into the perfect No. But I just mean, you know,
Speaker 1: for all we know, the people who bailed out were
Speaker 1: the pilots, right, I mean, if I agree, I'm just
Speaker 1: I get it. And yes, okay, I see you know
Speaker 1: they get hit and they say, hey, you guys come
Speaker 1: forward to take the controls. We've all got to go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom. We'll be right, there's out this door. Sorry,
Speaker 1: this is in the bathroom. Um. Yeah. But it's weird
Speaker 1: that if they were supposed to be flying a sanitized mission,
Speaker 1: that this dog tag was there. Oh yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: that's weird. The other thing that's weird is that the
Speaker 1: bone fragments that were all recovered, they couldn't really identify
Speaker 1: them to anyone, because I kid you not, they were
Speaker 1: literally fragments. They couldn't even prove that they were human.
Speaker 1: You would kind of expect that you would after twenty
Speaker 1: years and in that situation, but they said that they couldn't.
Speaker 1: They didn't know. It's not that they said they couldn't,
Speaker 1: they said they didn't want to run d n A
Speaker 1: analysis at the time. This is so of course, technologies
Speaker 1: made leaps and bounds since then, but they didn't run
Speaker 1: d n A on them, so they couldn't confirm who
Speaker 1: or what it was. The other weird thing is that
Speaker 1: I mentioned that they found a tooth or a partial
Speaker 1: Mohler on site. Well, that moler they matched it up
Speaker 1: to Peter Trestman. Here's the odd thing is that when
Speaker 1: the the U. S. Air Force came to Peter Crestman's
Speaker 1: family and said, hey, this is this is Peter's Moehler
Speaker 1: and we have these X rays of his teeth to
Speaker 1: prove it. They showed them X rays of a full
Speaker 1: set of teeth on the top and a full set
Speaker 1: of teeth on the bottom. The problem is, Peter Crestman
Speaker 1: didn't have all of his teeth. He was missing teeth.
Speaker 1: He had to wear a partial. So whose X ray
Speaker 1: is that that they used to match the tooth to
Speaker 1: It could have been it could have been a mistake
Speaker 1: or a fraud, or are they sure it wasn't just
Speaker 1: an earlier X ray before he got partial. I believe
Speaker 1: that before he went in to service, he already had that.
Speaker 1: And if the partial was in his mouth when the
Speaker 1: x ratium, it would be very obvious because the partial
Speaker 1: has metal. The X ray was not from from previously.
Speaker 1: They didn't they didn't like contact family dentists back home,
Speaker 1: and everything that I have read says that that was
Speaker 1: not the case. That it was. The military had those
Speaker 1: X rays. It was there, you know, x rays he
Speaker 1: took in the military. But this is so here's the
Speaker 1: thing though, and this is I know this infuriates the
Speaker 1: families with the all of the armed forces. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: not just gonna point at the Air Force here, but
Speaker 1: all of the armed forces over the years have seriously
Speaker 1: dropped the ball when it came to identifying recovered remains
Speaker 1: of soldiers killed in action. There are times where they
Speaker 1: have sent parts to a family and then realized that, wait,
Speaker 1: they sent I'm just gonna make up names here. Okay,
Speaker 1: they they said Bob's remains in place of Don's remains,
Speaker 1: But Don's remains are actually in Tim's grave, and they
Speaker 1: don't actually know where Don or the first guy's remains are.
Speaker 1: But the third guy's grave is actually filled with somebody else.
Speaker 1: And it's it's this weird, and there's no easy way
Speaker 1: to fix it, because what do you do go to
Speaker 1: family and say, we screwed up. We need to exhume
Speaker 1: your loved one and you have found closure, and now sorry,
Speaker 1: we gotta take it away because we were wrong. No,
Speaker 1: you don't, you don't do that. I would think that
Speaker 1: they would just, you know, like there's been cases like that.
Speaker 1: I would just quietly move the bones and not tell
Speaker 1: the family my son out there. But it just it
Speaker 1: was gonna say a couple of things number one, they
Speaker 1: do screw up a lot. On the other hand, in
Speaker 1: circumstances like that, I could see where you could do that.
Speaker 1: But they also still seem to actually still be working
Speaker 1: on this. I mean, they actually are devoting a lot
Speaker 1: of resources to trying to straighten everything out, identify everybody
Speaker 1: to the best that they can, and they are trying.
Speaker 1: Now yeah, well, I say, if you, if you listen
Speaker 1: to the families, then they say, no, they're not trying,
Speaker 1: and they're just they're trying to cover it all up.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is all a matter of perspective.
Speaker 1: And I get that because if if you you know,
Speaker 1: these families came into this situation expecting things to be
Speaker 1: one way and to be given all of the information,
Speaker 1: and they feel like they've been jerked around for decades,
Speaker 1: that's bound to build up a lot of resentment. So
Speaker 1: you can see where all these families get together. I
Speaker 1: mean I read an article somewhere and somebody said, when
Speaker 1: you read one of these, you think, well, the family
Speaker 1: is crazy and nothing is going on. And then when
Speaker 1: you talk to five or ten families and they all
Speaker 1: tell you the same story, you start to wonder what
Speaker 1: actually is going on? Is there some kind of something
Speaker 1: in the background, some plan that we don't know about,
Speaker 1: and it's a game that somebody else is playing. We
Speaker 1: just don't know the rules to. I mean, it's it
Speaker 1: leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Well, I think
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of irresponsibility on the parts
Speaker 1: of some people, though, like you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people really kept the story alive and kept the families
Speaker 1: excited and interested in the whole thing. When you know,
Speaker 1: my opinion, there's there's not a single shred of evidence
Speaker 1: that that they survived the plane crash. Would that there's
Speaker 1: not not one shred of evidence. I want a single one.
Speaker 1: I would say that the missing jump door is to
Speaker 1: me a shred of evidence that it's not. To me
Speaker 1: it is, but the wings. Here's the real reason the
Speaker 1: door was probably gone is that it's very possible that
Speaker 1: it blew out in midflight when they were hit. I
Speaker 1: get that, Joe. Actually the jump door, the parador, the
Speaker 1: part that the paratroop door or whatever they call it.
Speaker 1: Actually in Southeast Asia on those on those planes, the
Speaker 1: crews removed those all the time, and they flew without
Speaker 1: them all the time because it was so hot there
Speaker 1: that was one way to keep it kind of keep
Speaker 1: it cool in the plane. But these years you are
Speaker 1: flying at nights. An issue. But the other thing about
Speaker 1: these planes, well it may or may not be an issue.
Speaker 1: I mean, it may well be that particular bird they
Speaker 1: pulled that door off months before, or even a year
Speaker 1: or two before, and nobody even knew where the damn
Speaker 1: door was anymore, so it couldn't even put it back.
Speaker 1: They typically flew without those doors in place. You know,
Speaker 1: I've read, I've read a lot of stuff from airman
Speaker 1: who said that the doors were there, but they always
Speaker 1: left them unlocked so they could get out faster. Which
Speaker 1: but but to me, there's there's absolutely no reason to
Speaker 1: put a lot of any weight whatsoever on that door
Speaker 1: being missing. The search and rescue team reported that that
Speaker 1: the parachutes were gone, well, of course, but they couldn't
Speaker 1: report those were gone because they didn't go into the plane. No. No,
Speaker 1: you can see you can see under the plane by
Speaker 1: looking through the door, because the band that holds the
Speaker 1: parachutes is right across from the door and in the
Speaker 1: fuselage of the plane. Which and every every account that
Speaker 1: I have read, the rear door, the entry exit door,
Speaker 1: the main actually exit door. They're they're right across the
Speaker 1: jump door. Yeah, they jumped, They're right across, and that
Speaker 1: every every account that I have read of this, the
Speaker 1: search and rescue team reported that the door was missing.
Speaker 1: They also reported that the parachutes were missing. But the
Speaker 1: thing about it is, and so that's considered to be
Speaker 1: a piece of evidence to support the idea that they
Speaker 1: jumped out of the plane seeing nothing that I've I've
Speaker 1: really seen, has ever given any good in occasion that
Speaker 1: they were in that portion of the plane to be
Speaker 1: able to identify that. My point is, they said they
Speaker 1: didn't go into the rear of the plane, so therefore
Speaker 1: it's just not a for certain which is why I'm
Speaker 1: not willing to just say, no, they didn't see them,
Speaker 1: but they didn't, you know, crawl through the body of
Speaker 1: the plane. That's That's where I'm getting at here, and
Speaker 1: that's why I'm not completely opposed to it. Yeah, and so,
Speaker 1: but my understanding was, or at least the way it's
Speaker 1: been written, and the search and rescue team reported that
Speaker 1: the parachutes were missing, they were gone. There is some
Speaker 1: remportant that says that, but there's also reporting that said
Speaker 1: that's what I said earlier is that there's also when
Speaker 1: you read it, there's stuff that says that they never
Speaker 1: went back there. So that's why I don't completely believe it,
Speaker 1: as we see this all the time where stories are
Speaker 1: inflated in sentences and actions are added to it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. But but yeah, but this is used at
Speaker 1: least by some people in this little conspiracy as theory
Speaker 1: as evidence the parachutes were missing. You know, they were
Speaker 1: reported as being missing. Whether they actually were or not
Speaker 1: is beside the point. I mean, that's what these people
Speaker 1: are all saying. They're saying the parachutes were gone, therefore
Speaker 1: they must have jumped, right. The point is, of course
Speaker 1: the parachutes were gone. They were just in a bin.
Speaker 1: I mean they just fell out. And you know, so
Speaker 1: of course they were not so they could have fallen out,
Speaker 1: they could have been incinerated in the fire. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that the parachutes couldn't come out all. I'm just again,
Speaker 1: I just don't feel like anybody laid eyes on them.
Speaker 1: Can I propose a new theory? Sure, it's not some
Speaker 1: vast conspiracy, it's just general incompetence could have been and
Speaker 1: that like at this point, the military is trying to
Speaker 1: make good on the mistakes and laziness of their forefathers.
Speaker 1: It could be that well, and they did try to
Speaker 1: do right by these men when they went back and
Speaker 1: they investigated the crash site. They did bring all of
Speaker 1: those remains back, They did put them into a shared
Speaker 1: grave site at Arlington National Cemetery. They did hold a
Speaker 1: service for him. So they are trying to do what
Speaker 1: they can to recognize and honor them, and not for nothing,
Speaker 1: because I know if it were my family, I would
Speaker 1: be piste and like need to know more. But when
Speaker 1: it comes down to it, how many people are in
Speaker 1: our military right now or even then, I'm a lot
Speaker 1: so and we're talking about four men, right And I
Speaker 1: totally understand, like from the family perspective, I don't want
Speaker 1: to say we shouldn't blah, But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's like it's for four people who probably died.
Speaker 1: Because you've seen the pictures, it probably died. And you know,
Speaker 1: at some point, I'm sure the military just kind of
Speaker 1: was like, we have so many other things going on,
Speaker 1: we cannot like, we can't have resources going into this.
Speaker 1: We've out to go. We just have to walk away
Speaker 1: from it, and then twenty years later they're trying, they're
Speaker 1: trying to make it well, yeah, and this is now,
Speaker 1: this is twenty years on since that happened, but that
Speaker 1: would be mine, you know. There we've been a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of other conflicts, so they've got a whole other
Speaker 1: slew of hot potatoes on their hands to try and
Speaker 1: deal with. They're still looking at stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: that's what's what's really. It is sad though, that people
Speaker 1: there are I've read these stories of these families, of
Speaker 1: these people that have been trying for years. I mean,
Speaker 1: they still feel that their their loved ones are probably missing.
Speaker 1: And I look at the story and it seems to
Speaker 1: be glaringly obvious that there's no way in hell that
Speaker 1: they that they actually didn't die in that plane crash.
Speaker 1: And it's sad that these people have spent all this
Speaker 1: time and kind of, you know, let their lives be
Speaker 1: consumed by this and you then that's the difference is
Speaker 1: you don't have the emotional attachment or why, and so
Speaker 1: sometimes that makes it easy to make a quick decision.
Speaker 1: And people have possibly been a little bit misled by
Speaker 1: you know, some I don't know some parties. Some parties,
Speaker 1: they've been a little bit mislad um, so it's kind
Speaker 1: of sad. But yeah, I don't all right, I think
Speaker 1: those guys all die that alight, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and wrap this up. Well no, no, no,
Speaker 1: let's go on. No, I think it's way too hot
Speaker 1: to keep going. Oh yeah, alright. Well, if you want
Speaker 1: to read some of the links about this particular episode,
Speaker 1: or any episode, you can find that on our website,
Speaker 1: which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. And there, of
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Speaker 1: guys got anything else? Alright? Alright, well, we will wrap
Speaker 1: this one up and we will talk to everybody next week.
Speaker 1: Sky Train good point.