I have just adopted a POW/MOW,and I got the imformation yesterday. Here is the person I was given along with some others who are missing:

Name:James Kelly Patterson Rank/Branch:C3/US Navy Unit:VA 35,USS ENTERPRISE(CVAN-65) Date of Birth:14 July 1940 Home City of Record:Long Beach CA Date Loss:19 May 1967 Cuntry of Loss:North Vietnam Loss Coordinates:204537N 1052539E(WH445955) Status(in 1973):Prisoner of War Category:2 Achft/Vehicle/Ground:A6A Other Persioners In Incident:Capt:Eugene McDaniel(released POW)

REMARKS PROB CAPTURED WITH BROKENLEG

SYNOPSIS:When nuclear pow ered USS ENTERPRISE arrived on Yankee Station on December 2,1965,she was the largest warship ever built. She brought with her not only an imposing physical presence,but also an impressive component of warplanes and the newest technology. By the end of her first week of combat operations, the ENTERPRISE had set a record of 165 combat sorties in a single day, surpassing the KITTY HAWK's 131. By the end of her first combat her air wing had flown over 13,000 combat sorties. The record had not been acheived without cost.

When the ENTERPRISE arrived in Vietnam on its second combat cruise,two of its pilots were LtCdr.Eugene B. "Red" McDaniel and Lt.James K.Patterson, an A6 "Intruder" team. The Intruder ploits were known to have,in the words of talent, courage and aggressive leadership," and were sent on some of the most difficult missions of the war.

On May 19,167 McDaniel was the pilot and Patterson the backseater abroad an A6A with a mission to bomb a truck repair facilty at Van Dien,Hei Duong Province, North Vietnam. The aircraft and established voice radio contact with other aircraft in the area.

Lt.Patterson badly broke his leg upon landing,but maintained radio contact with resecue forces for a period of four days. On May 21, he reported that enemy forces had taken a recovery kit which had been dropped to him and that he had moved up a hill for safety.LtCdr.McDaniel was taken perisoner by the North Vietnamese and taken to Hanoi.

Durong the nearly six years he was a perisoner of war, McDaniel never saw his backseater. He continally asked about him, and was given conficting stories.

In late 1967,he was told by a guard that Lt.Patterson had recovered from his injuries. Partly because the vietnamese seemed to be toying with him by changing the story on Patterson , and partly because he never saw or heard of his backseater,McDaniel finally came to the belief that his backseater and friend had not been aptured,but was dead.

McDaniel is noted for three things as a preisoner-his honor,his optimism and faith in his country, and also for having been the perisoner who received the most brutal torture at the hands of the Vietnamese.

"Red" McDaniel was released March 4,1973 believing that Patterson and the others who were not released were dead. It was not until he served the Navy as a liason to Congress that he began to see evidence that Americans were still alive in Southeast Asia.It was a heartbreaking realization.

When Captain McDanieleft the Navy, he formed The American Defense Institute in order to foster patrioism in America's youth and to share with other Americans what he learned about communism and why it must be fought at every level. One of ADI's most important issues is that of missing Americans in Southeast Asia.

In late 1986, a former NSA intelligence analyst stated that backseaters like Patterson,who possessed technical knowledge surpassing that of the pilot were singled out. The analyst stated that in the intelligence commuity these men were dubbed,"MB",or "Moscow Bound". They would make valuable trades to the Soviet Union for a heavily indebted Vietnam.

The same year,a Congresssional team visting the Central Identification Laboratory learned that centain identification belonging to Patterson had been given to the U.S. by the Vietnamese knew what happened to James K. Patterson.

MISSING:LT.JAMES KELLY PATTERSON

"Raygun 502," bombarder-navigator James Kelly Patterson and pilot Eugene "Red" McDaniel in their A6A "Inttrder" all-weather attack bomber, was downed over Hoa Binh province, North Vietnam,by a surface-to-air missile about mid-day on Ho Chi Minh's birthday,19 May 1967, a day of scattered clouds,10 miles visibility,Patterson and McDaniel ejected safely and touched earth near each other and close by their plane's crash site. A short time later squadrin-mates Nick Carpenter and Richard Slaasted crossed over the burning crash and immediately located and spoke to Patterson on the ground. He reported he had a badly broken leg and could not move.

Carpenter/Slaasted returned in their A6A the following day (20 May) and again found Patterson without difficlty. They spoke to him and saw him on the ground "in a U-shaped valley." The following morning(21 May) Carpenter returned in the back seat of an Air force F4 and again found/saw/spoke to Patterson,then dropped a fullon Extraction kit to him. That right,two other F4s found Patterson,who reported the Fullon gear contact, and rescue efforts were canceled.

McDaniel, also injured,had been captured on 20 May before he could reach Patterson and spent the next six years a POW until his repatriation in 1973. He has told me that they were both on the ground less than a mile from the crash site.

Carpenter was killed during his second four in Vietnam,but Slaasted told me the area around Patterson contained villages and numerous trucks.

The correct coordinates of Patterson's last known location and the crash site have not survived in the records,but (established from U.S. eyewitness reports) we know that he was within one mile (McDaniel) or even closer (Carpenter) to the crash site, in a valley(Carpenter), in the vicinty of proximal linking of Patterson's location to the crash site are critical.

There is ample evidence to indicate Patterson was captured: McDaniel was told by a prison guard in 1967 that Patterson had recovered from his injury and was well. Another repatriated POW,Dewey Smith,said that in the fall of 1967 he saw an interrogation questionaire with Patterson's name at it's head. Bobby Jo Keesee,released civilian POW,reported seeing Patterson's name on a cell wall in a North Vietnmese peison near the Chinese border. On 4 November 1991 investigative reporter Yuri Pankov,in the respected Moscow newspaper Kommersant,wrote that a U.S. "second pilot" shot down over North Vietnam on-19 May 1967 was taken overland through China to Saryshagansk,in the then Soviet republic of Kazakhsttan, in the fall of 1967. patterson's is the only unresolved M.I.A case meeting Pankov's criteria. (note:He was expert in the use of aircraft's state-of-the-art electronics to defeat Vietnams Russian-made missile defense system-Saryshagank was the site of a Soviet missile research facility)

Twenty three years after Patterson's loss, in December 1990, the Vietnamese brought before U.S. investigators four "witnesses." This was their testmony,supported, in part only, by Vietnamese reports of unknown authenticity:

The miltiamen involved in the search for 502;s aircrew mobilized from Thuong Tien village in Kim Boi district. After searching in very rough terrain (described in various Vietnamese reports as a heavily forested, steeply sopping tall mountain) they captured the Fullon gear. Nearby they found Patterson,shot him,and buried him on the spot(in disobedence to standing orders). Some time later his body disappeared because (according to "witness" testimony and previous reports) it was 1) bobed by U.S. planes,or 2) eaten by wild animals, or 3) washed away by a nearby stream. This point is on a ridgeline about midway down it's three mile length runing south from the top of Nui Doi Thoi, the highest mountain in the area.

We do know the Vietnamese made contact with Patterson because they took from him his military I.D. card and Geneva Conventions card and returned them to the U.S. in 1985. Later, to lend credence to one of their reports, they attached a photocopy of the Geneva Conventions card. The card they copied,however, was phoney, not matching the real card now in my custody!

The actual Vietnamese-claimed"grave site" was pointed out by the "witnesses" and thoughly investigated in May 1992 by a U.S. team of experts bome on helicopters (the site is inaccessible by truck). Nothing to indicate a body had ever been there was found. No trace or evidence of animals,not a button,a shred of clot, a tooth, a zipper,was located. In fact the soil strata itself was found to be undistured.

In spite of the absence of remains, in pite of numerous U.S.-noted contradictions and inconsistencies between "witnesses,and previous Vietnamese reports, and between"witnesses" and the steep investigators threw out those established facts in favor of the uncorroborated "witness" testimony! They accepted the "grave site" as Patterson's last known location,even though it is on a ridge on the steep south slope of 3,930 foot Nui Doi Thoi mountain,not a valley or village or truck road within several kilometers. Despite the evidence of his survival and without any proof to the contrary whatever, Paaterson's alleged death was accepted as fact! Since the Vietnamese and the U.S. now agreed as to his fate, his case, once a "compelling discrepamcy," was now considered "resolved."

Early in 1992 I obtained a photograph of Patterson's/McDaniel's plane Exploding on impact with the ground and sent it to U.S. investigators. In the fall of 1993 satelite imagery experts positvely matched terrain features shown in the photo with those in satelite imagery of the area, anf located the crash site at 20o39'37"N105o23'12"E(WH401844), in Ky Son district two and a quarter miles west of the "grave" on the ridgeline.

When the photo is oriented to the trail of smoke left by the plane shows it was traveling generally northward and before impact. The crew, therefore, ejected somewhere generally to the south of the crash. Within a mile in that direction are several hamlets, valleys,and truck-accessible

The ridgline running south from Nu Doi Thoi is a major terrain feature and marks the border between Kim Boi district to the east and Ky Son district to the wast. No trails are mapped across this ragged feature directly linking Thuong Tien village(the group of hamlets in the stream valley east of the ridge) in Kim Boi district to the Ky Son district. Midday on Ho Chi Minh's birthday,19 May 1967,every village wast of the ridge would have witnessed the missile explosion,the smoking,crashing,burning plane, and the parachuting crew men. The militiamem in this area would have been immediately moblized to capture the crew men,and villagers would have been drwan to the crash site to salvage materials.The people east of the ridge inThuong Tien village,by contrast,would not have seen most if any of the event,their view blocked by the ridge.That they became involved in the sreach need was immediate,so they would probably not have been called upon to assist-it wold take them too long to traverse the ridge. That they became involved in the search runs counter to common sense and logic. So,not only does the Vietnamese descrition of his last nownm location, but Thuong Tien village's very involvement is unlikely.

I believe Patterson servived his apture, and the Vietnamese story is a fabrication possibly to cause the absence of a body or a living prisoner last seen being led away to kazakkstan.

I cannot emphanize enogh how important it is to keep pushing this issue inside the Beltway... The need to get specific answers is more important now than ever before. If still alive, some MIAs are now in thier 70s... They don't have much time left. We have to demand the answers from the bureaucrates and keep standing on their necks(figuratively speaking) until they get the message that THEY work for US and that we are serious about getting these long overdue responses. Displomatic considerations aside...We can no longer allow questions protocols established by pseudo-airistocratic armchair stratgists,to determine the fate of the men who were in the trenches while the diplomets were sharing sherry and canapes and talking about "Thier Plans" for the future of SE Asia.