Defense Department forensic scientists identified the remains of two airmen who had been missing in action since the Vietnam War, announced the Pentagon on Aug. 6. Lt. Col. Charles M. Walling of Phoenix and Maj. Aado Kommendant of Lakewood, N.J., will receive a group burial with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., on Aug. 8—the 46th anniversary of the crash that took their lives, states DOD’s release. Walling was already individually buried on June 15 at Arlington, notes the release. Walling and Kommendant’s F-4C crashed on Aug. 8, 1966, during a close air support mission over Song Be province, Vietnam. Search and rescue efforts were unsuccessful in the days following the crash. Between 1992 and 2010, joint US-Vietnamese teams investigated the crash site and then excavated it, recovering aircraft pieces, Walling’s identification tag, and human remains. The recovered items led to the identification of these airmen, states the release.
President Donald Trump on July 4 signed into law $150 billion in defense funds as part of the tax-and-spending package known as the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” after congressional Republicans approved the legislation in narrow, drawn-out votes earlier this week.
