DOD’s POW/Missing Personnel Office announced Monday that the remains of four airmen who served during the Vietnam War had been identified. They were: Maj. Bernard L. Bucher, of Eureka, Ill.; Maj. John L. McElroy, of Eminence, Ky.; 1st Lt. Stephen C. Moreland, of Los Angeles; and SSgt. Frank M. Hepler, of Glensdale, Pa. They were flying a C-130 evacuating Vietnamese citizens from Kham Duc Special Forces Camp near Da Nang, South Vietnam on May 12, 1968, when their aircraft, according to a forward air controller in another aircraft, exploded in mid-air. The crew had reported taking ground fire as they took off. Excavations of a crash site in 1993 and 1994 produced remains that analysts identified as those of the four airmen. According to the Pentagon release, remains of these four airmen and those of A1C George W. Long, of Medicine, Kan., and Army Capt. Warren R. Orr Jr., of Kewanee, Ill., both identified in 2007, are to be buried as a group.
The top Air Force commander on on the Japanese island of Okinawa has clamped down alcohol and issued a curfew for junior enlisted Airmen and Guardians at Kadena Air Base for the next month. The order came roughly two weeks after a U.S. Marine was arrested for allegedly robbing and…