Talk:James "Earthquake McGoon" McGovern Jr.
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[edit] Vietnam MIA `McGoon' coming home for burial
By Richard Pyle Associated Press Published October 23, 2006
NEW YORK -- Half a century after he died in the flaming crash of a CIA-owned cargo plane and became one of the first two Americans to die in combat in Vietnam, a legendary soldier of fortune known as "Earthquake McGoon" finally is coming home.
The skeletal remains of James McGovern Jr., discovered in an unmarked grave in northern Laos in 2002, were identified last month by laboratory experts at the U.S. military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command. They are to be flown back to the mainland this week for a military funeral Saturday in New Jersey, said McGovern's nephew, James McGovern III of Forked River, N.J.
Six feet and 260 pounds--huge for a fighter pilot--McGovern carved out a flying career during and after World War II that made him a legend in Asia. An American saloon owner in China dubbed him "Earthquake McGoon," after a hulking hillbilly character in the comic strip "Li'l Abner."
He died on May 6, 1954, when his C-119 Flying Boxcar cargo plane was hit by ground fire while parachuting a howitzer to the besieged French garrison at Dien Bien Phu.
"Looks like this is it, son," McGovern radioed another pilot as his crippled plane staggered 75 miles into Laos, where it cartwheeled into a hillside.
Killed along with "McGoon," 31, were his co-pilot, Wallace Buford, 28, and a French crew chief. Two cargo handlers, a Frenchman and a Thai, were thrown clear and survived.
Ho Chi Minh's communist forces captured Dien Bien Phu the next day.
Although civilians, McGovern and Buford, an ex-World War II bomber pilot, were the first Americans to die in combat in the Asian country where war would kill nearly 60,000 Americans and more than 1 million Vietnamese.
Dr. Thomas Holland, director of JPAC's Central Identification Laboratory, said McGovern was only the second person ever identified through "nuclear" DNA from a male relative--a particularly difficult task with bones that are decades old. Most cases rely on mitochondrial DNA, from female relatives.
In 1944, McGovern went to China as a fighter pilot in the 14th Air Force's "Tiger Shark" squadron, descended from the famous Flying Tigers. According to Felix Smith, a retired pilot of the CIA-owned Civil Air Transport and a McGovern friend, he was credited with shooting down four Japanese Zero fighter planes and destroying five on the ground.
At war's end in 1945, McGovern signed on with Civil Air Transport, or CAT, which was under contract to Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist regime, then fighting a civil war against Mao Tse-tung's communists.
Captured by communist troops after a forced landing, "McGoon" was freed six months later. Colleagues joked that his captors got tired of feeding him.
In 1997, an American MIA team investigating an unrelated case found a C-119 propeller at Ban Sot, and a JPAC photo analyst spotted possible graves in aerial photos.
Excavation in 2002 uncovered remains that turned out to be McGovern's.
About the battle
The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended in May 1954 after a 57-day siege by Vietnamese communists of a French army base. It signaled the end of French colonial power in Indochina, helping set the stage for the lengthy Vietnam War that ended with the fall of the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government in 1975.
