"Earthquake McGoon" Buried With Full Military Honors

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced Wednesday the remains of an American civilian pilot, missing in action from Vietnam while flying for Civil Air Transport, of the CIA, have been identified and returned to his family.

James B. "Earthquake McGoon" McGovern Jr. of Elizabeth, NJ was buried Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington, DC with full military honors.

On May 6, 1954, McGovern, along with co-pilot, First Officer Wallace A. Buford, and four French servicemen, departed Haiphong, Vietnam, in their C-119 Flying Boxcar on what was supposed to be the last supply drop to French forces at Camp Isabelle-the remaining French holdout in the battle of Dien Bien Phu. As the aircraft approached the drop zone, it was hit by anti-aircraft fire.

"As the aircraft approached the drop zone, it was hit by anti-aircraft fire," the Pentagon said in a statement. "The pilots attempted to fly southwest to the relative safety of Laos, but crashed along the Song (River) Ma in Houaphan Province."

Two of the French servicemen survived and were taken prisoner by Lao forces. One of them died within a few days of capture and the other was released and returned to France a few months later. McGovern, Wallace and the other two French servicemen were not recovered.

McGovern was one of the first of only three Americans to die in the conflict that doomed French colonialism in Indochina, as the area was called at that time, according to the Associated Press. 

US-Lao People's Democratic Republic (L.P.D.R.) joint teams, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), traveled to Houaphan Province twice between 1997 and 1998 to investigate. Several local Laotian citizens recalled the crash and said three of the crewmen had been buried near the crash site. The team found small fragments of aircraft wreckage, but no graves.

Phimpha, a 65-year-old farmer, told the AP in 2005 he was fishing in a river when the plane came down, and later saw three bodies, among them a "very large Caucasian with a round face, still strapped in the pilot's seat."

A few days later he noticed fresh grave mounds near a road, Phimpha said. His wife, Thok, 67, recalled that as a girl she "always ran past that location because of the ghosts thought to be there."

In 2002, another joint US-L.P.D.R. team went back, this time excavating the site. They found crew-related equipment and aircraft wreckage, including an aircraft data plate dated 8-21-52, but no human remains. A few months later, yet another team revisited the site. This time they were successful and recovered a single set of human remains from an isolated burial.

Scientists from JPAC and the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory used circumstantial evidence, dental comparisons and mitochondrial DNA to positively identify McGovern's remains.

McGovern has been described as a soldier of fortune, flying in China during World War II with the Flying Tigers and was credited with destroying four enemy aircraft in the air and five on the ground, according to Agence France-Presse.

He was a POW for several months of communist Chinese troops who freed him because he called them "liars" for not letting him go. The flamboyant aviator also reportedly won a clutch of dancing girls in a poker game, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

A saloon owner in China is said to have nicknamed McGovern "Earthquake McGoon" after a hulking hillbilly character in the "L'il Abner" comic strip.

FMI: www.dtic.mil/dpmo