Thinking Sideways: Baron 52

So uh. And you know, if you don't want to do that, it's understandable you should because there's lots of cats and dogs and need homes. But if you don't want to do that, but you still want to help out, you know, you can always donate. There's lots of cat rescues and dog rescues out there that really need the money, really they do. Uh. And also you can volunteer. They need volunteers big time. So yeah, do what you can, and Phido and Fluffy really appreciate it. It's quickly to arter.

Hey everybody, and welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve as usual, joined by den Go and once again we have a mystery seventies sexually actually continuing to present day, though well it is, it is continuing to present day. It was actually going to say it's a first for us, as we haven't really done a

Vietnam War mystery before. And actually there's a lot of interesting Vietnam War mysteries out there, there are, and I don't know why we've avoided it, Probably because the Vietnam War is a bit of a third rail, you know, it's at that electrified rail for a lot of people, even still today. It's similar to doing you know, shows about that are circling around nine eleven or you know things like that. So I'm going to give the caveat

in the beginning. Is Devin always love to say, this show is not necessarily about the basis and everything that happened in the war. It's going to be about our subjects, one very specific incident in the war. Similarly, if you love the Vietnam War, we're not going to do a good job explaining it. No, we don't email us telling us that we're bad at history, because we know we know really bad for a long long time. I sometimes I read how long it is, I'm like that was

Oh god. Okay, so let's let's jump right into the story. Okay, shall we do that? I guess? Yeah? All right, So our stories the starts um maybe on the of January three, which for people who do know their history, especially around Vietnam, we'll know that that is the day that the Paris Piece Accords were signed to end the war slash, conflict, slash, whatever other thing people called it that was going on in Vietnam. Now, of course, the Piece Accords were intended

to end that conflict. Now, whether it did or not, or how that went about, that's a whole another ball of wax. Yeah, there is. But I say that our story might start on that day, but we're not really positive for reasons that will come out later on. Our story mainly those starts on the fourth of February seventy three. That is when a US Air Force e C forty seven, operating under the call signed Baron fifty two, Yeah, took

off from Uban, Thailand at eleven o'clock at night. The plane and crew went about their mission, and you know, all was well for them for a little while, and then they failed to make their required radio contact at two a m. At which point in search and rescue effort was launched, but it would be three days before the wreckage would be found crashed into the mountain side

in the Jungles of Laos. The plane, when it was found owned, was upside down, its wings were shorn off, the rear portion of the plane was pretty destroyed because it had it been on fire. Yeah, yeah, they pretty large fire. Problem of course is that at this time in Laos, in that area, this is part of the human trail, so that even though the hostilities are not

supposed to be happening, there's still enemy forces around. You're not talking just North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese communists, and yeah, everybody, everybody's around, and nobody likes the Americans, which big shocker happens all the time in situations like this, So search and rescue efforts. They launch a mission on the ninth of February and four men repel out of a helicopter to the ground to inspect the craft, and their plan is to confirm its identity and then identify and if possible,

recover the bodies of the crew. At the same time, they're also task with destroying any sense of equipment that they might find has survived the crash, because this particular plane, as we'll talk about, has some very um some covert radio sniffing technology on it, which was very important to the U. S. Military. But these four men they get down there and they are able to They're only able

to spend forty minutes total at the site. That in turn includes the time repelling out of and repelling back up into the helicopter, so they're not on the ground but for maybe twenty or thirty minutes total. They're looking around and they can get into the cockpit of the plane.

Did they get in or they just look in the windows, because I've heard from some accounts it looks like they just looked in they were It sounds to me they were able to get a short distance into it based on one of the bodies that they found that would have been partially behind the partition. So I think they did go in, now not very far, you know, probably not farther than the pilot's chair distance into the cab.

It was. The wreck was very unstable, and that will play a part in the way they go about things. But when they get in there, they're able to identify the remains of four individuals. There's Captain George Spitz, he's the pilot, their second lieutenant several prim he was a co pilot. Captain Arthur Bollinger was the navigator. And then outside of the plane they also found the body of First Lieutenant Robert Bernard, and he was the third part Bernhard,

thank you, my bad. What they didn't find, though, and this is important to our story, is that they did not find the other four members of the crew, which again that's what's going on here, because this plane had eight people on board, four in the front who were flying it, and four in the rear who were running the radio equipment. Well, the of the sorry to interrupt, there wasn't a back of the plane anymore, right, Well,

there was to a degree. There was, to a degree, it wasn't fully intact because of the fire and the crashes. The tail had been ripped off, Like this wreck was really really unstable. Yeah, yeah, especially if they come down very hard. So what the mystery here is, of course, is that if they didn't see the men the bodies of the men at the back of the plane, did they actually die in the plane the crash, or were they actually able to bail out before the plane went down,

and if so, what then happened to them? Uh? And there there's a lot of events that happened after the after the plane initially disappears from radio contact that makes some people think that maybe they did get out. And we'll walk through all of that, but let's stop for a second and let's roll back to the very beginning of the story, because that's the general synopsis of why this is a mystery. Okay, Sis, you know, I'm a long winded guy. According to the Internet. Didn't your mom

teach you to be the sinct? Actually I met your mom. Never mind, I was about to say, if you really want me to answer this question, because I could go on for a while. When Baron fifty two lifted off, it was only eight days after the Paris Peace Accords had officially gone into effect, but the US military, being not the most trusting organization out there, didn't actually stop

its covert activities. Yeah. Yeah, well, and and officially, I have to guess or unofficially, I'm sure that they're like, well, listen, you know, we need to keep an eye on the Communist People's Party of Vietnam and and find out what's going on. Just in case they're, you know, gonna pull a fast one on us and break the rules. That's usually happens with C So it was makes a lot of sense for contact. Remember it's eight days. I mean

when bearfits two left, it was only eight days. It wasn't as if this was the first time a ceasefire had been called and both sides had broken them before. So things like this might be why those those things got broken in the past. But if you want to kind of kind of keep it, see if they're actually abiding by it or not before you pull all your

troops out. Yeah. Yeah, so Baron fifty two itself, though, Bear fifty two is a modified C forty seven aircraft, and people who listen to this show regularly may actually remember that plane from such great hits as Skytrain. Wait a minute, train, skytrain, I did say, skytrain. Yeah, yeah, modified d C three great great great planes. Yeah, except when they crash. Yeah. Well, And for people who don't who may not remember that great hit, like Joe said, it's a it's a d C three, it's it's a

two engine prop plane. It was. It usually was, or at least in the beginning, was meant to be hauled hauling cargo, but then they started using it at times to haul troops. This particular plane though, it is called an EC forty seven because the back end of it is crammed full of electronics equipment. So I mean that's the the simple version of what the E stands for. And it had four radio stations that each had individual man operating said radio to be listening in on whoever

it was that they were following from the sky. Yeah, I was. Actually it was like they had a lot of rd F units in it, and so they could actually, like you were cruising along anyway, they could get a fix on somebody, get a bearing, and then just cruise about a hundred miles down to get another fix and then triangulate, and that's where the bombers go. You know.

It's it's like pretty clever. Well, And in this particular plane, their job was on this particular night was they were posedly because of munitions fire that they had been taking anti aircraft fire they've been taking these planes that started

flying at about ten thousand feet. But they would also then go over the border, you know, head to Louse and the border of Vietnam, and they were tracking a convoy of tanks, so they were listening to them to try and figure out how far they were actually going and were they just maneuvering around or were they actually haul and tail heading south to continue the campaigns. That was their particular mission on this particular night. Now, the plane was, as I said, had eight, was staffed by

eight people. So the men in the or the men in the rear, which they often would get called the rear enders, which is just an odd way to put it, but it makes sense. They were all part of the security squadron. Off the tongue. I've never I don't remember ever seeing military numbers that were more than three digits. Shocked to see that. You never heard of the fighting

sixty Well, I must not watch enough movies. Um. The guys that were in the front of the plane, they were part of the three hundred sixty one Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron. I remember them. Yeah, basically a little more okay, but basically, like I said before, the division is four men in the back radio operators, four men in the

front flying, the navigating. The men who are operating the surveillance equipment on this flight are Sergeant Todd Melton, Sergeant Joseph Mattajov, Sergeant Peter Cressman, and Sergeant Dale Brandenburg that particular night, Like I said, they were supposed to be following a convoy of tanks, that we're traveling along the

human trail. And just I realized when I started doing the research for this, so you guys know, I'm going to Vietnam next year, right, So I started reading about Vietnam and one of the things I discovered is when it comes to geography, this happens all the time on this show. I'm an idiot. Turns out what I know

about Vietnam I learned from Good Morning Vietnam. Yeah, I think we don't learn geography very well in America because I had it in my head that the Ho Chi Minh Trail was an actual road and it's no, it was like this this mile, yeah, this mini mile wide swap that people would move through, and it jumped to the border of not from Vietnam to Louse and eventually

into Cambodia. Like I just always in my head thought it was, you know, like the main interstate or something stupid, which makes no sense, but that's what It would have been quite easy to interdict all that stuff. In retrospect, i'd be like this, But for anybody else who might have been under that misconception, I just wanted to be here to help cleared up so you don't fail from my foolishness. Yeah, jeez, guys, yeah, together, I knew all of that. Okay, good, very good with de Vietnam Vet,

you know, he knows this stuff. It's true. By the way, it should also be said about the Hotiban Trail is an area of northeast Laos that was extremely rugged. In fact, hardly anybody lived. There's another reason it made a great smuggling sort of thing because there were no villagers that could impour them on your movements or anything like that. It's so rugged, some mountainous that really you couldn't have a usable farm or anything like that up there, So

really nobody lived up there. That's why it was full of fighters and guerrillas who were on both sides of the campaign, because yeah, it was just a great place to hide. Yeah, it's the way that communications were set up for Barren fifty two. Yeah, because after you know, of course they're flying up and down, they're following, Yeah, they're following this this train of tanks on the Hoteman Trail.

But part of their their protocol was that they had to on the radio communicate with command every thirty minutes, and that was done on the hour in the half hour, and they were doing that as normal. At about one thirty in the morning, they called in and reported to Moonbeam, which was the name of the air command control center that they were reporting to, which was another airplane, which was another airplane that they had been fired upon, but

they hadn't been hit. They then also reported at one forty that they again had been fired at, but again had not been hit. And this time when they were fired at, if I remember correctly, it was actually radar controlled anti aircraft guns that were shooting at them. So it wasn't some bozo on a gun just firing These were you know, yeah, yeah, they're much more accurate, or can be more accurate. Um. So at this point, everything is fine, They're over the Ochman Trail, they haven't been hit.

And then two o'clock comes along and BEARN fifty two does not make its scheduled call. What happened? Well, as we know, they crashed. Joe. Oh yeah, okay, sorry, I forget so fast it's okay, it's all right. It's it's hot in here today. He's having that effect. I mean, the sweat is dripping off of me and it's disgusting,

and I apologize it is I'm shiny um. So so very quickly, search and rescue efforts are launched and the other aircraft that are in the area begin to look for Barren fifty two, and I'm actually though they should have they I'm surprised they didn't see him, because if that plane burned as hot as they say it did, it should have been a pretty bright spot in the jungle to see. But regardless, nobody found Barren fifty two on that first night. Yeah, well it's a lot of

area too, so I mean, I'm sure they didn't. You know, it is sure that that is a very good point, but yeah, I don't know. You can usually see big fires. I mean again, I'm not you know, since I actually I am not familiar with Vietnam at all, really rugged and mountainous, so that they're in a little valley and there's a little hill or mountain between you train that goes up in that and I don't know if it

was a clear night or not. You know, because if it was a clear knight, you would expect you could see a column of smoke, you would think, But if it wasn't. If it was and they went down to two a m. So you wouldn't really see smoke at that time in the morning. If it was, if there was a moon out, you probably Oh, yeah, I guess, okay, But anyway, the point of the matter is they didn't

see them. But it's weird. But it's weird that maybe not the same night though, another surveillance craft which was flying over the South China Sea, so this is directly to the east's couple hundred miles because it's out over

open water. Um, this plane picks up a radio communication that seemed to point to the fact that the men in the back of the plane, that the crew in the rear had actually been able to bail out or get out of the plane, but as soon as they hit the ground almost they were captured by the Vietnamese. Now these are these are coded communications. Yeah, and by the way, do you know what time that message was received?

I will be honest, they do not. In here is why Joe, is that I have seen it reported as anything from to thirty in the morning to five o'clock in the morning to eight o'clock in the morning. I have seen it reported all over and I I've found a bunch of you know, government reports and documents and stuff like that, and none of them actually said the freaking time on them. Frustrating. Yeah, so even in terry time, even in military time, sid stuff, I don't know. I

have no idea what time it was. No the time is reported all over. I'm I'm willing to go with you know, let's just say five o'clock, because that would make sense for enough time to have transpired for men to have bailed out of a plane and then been captured and then somebody making a radio communic a the I mean, for me, the real question is, right, it's never been reported that it was like midnight, right, it

wasn't before this crash happened. It's always, even if it's just even a half hour after, it's always after the crash happened. And that I think is the important part. Not necessarily so much, really important point would be great to be able to say, yeah, okay, reasonably there was that amount of time, but realistically, as long as it happened afterwards, we can give credence to it, so a

little bit. That's a good point. And so, like I said, this is these are coded communications from the Vietnamese army. So what we've got is we've got American men who are translating a coded message in another language. So and they're picking it up while in an airplane. So that well, I'm saying this because that means that the communication isn't always the clearest reception. And the guy who first met took this, who heard it, he jotted it down and wrote it down. It was then recorded, and it was

also recorded onto tape. That tape was then brought back to some command center I presume, where it was again listened to and a second person was able to uh code it or decode it. And what happens here is we get two different versions of the message. So here's well the translations, and you know, there's there's a lot of stuff. We'll talk about that a minute, but let

me give you the actual messages. The first versions as Group to seventeen is holding four pilots captive and the group is requesting orders concerning what to do with them. The second translator comes up with presently Group to ten or sometimes you'll see it said group to ten B. But presently group to ten has four pirates. They are going there's a gap from four toe that is the word to not the number two so and and that's

where it exists. Now, the problem with this, this log or this radio capture is what the military would do is they would have the second guy go through it and confirm it or correct it, and then they would send the tape back onto another plane to be recorded over again. So it does not exist anymore. But historically more credence is given to a second translation in a situation like this than a first translation. Is that correct, you would think, But I'm just wondering. I'm trying to

think of the politically correct way to say this. There's a lot of fighting and debate over which one is correct right in this particular instance. But I just didn't know if there was like a historic record of I'm sure this happened all the time, right that the translation, and so I just didn't know if the general consensus was we're going with what the second guy who's not in an airplane in a stressful situation says, or okay, So officially, the Air Force logs go with what the

second guys said. Okay, because the second guy I actually did get a chance to listen to it more than once, right, yes, yeah, yeah, I mean the first guy is doing it on the flyded so he's just trying to do it as quick as in an airplane and could get shot at any second. Yes, yes, exactly. Okay, so but that's I mean, I'm just trying to give historic context to which one generally would be given more.

I believe the second one. As we said, so okay, now as we know the plane it's wouldn't actually be found until the seventh of February, and then, like we talked about before, that wreckage wouldn't be inspected until two days later, which was the ninth of February. And the search and rescue team who were who repelled out of the Jolly Green Giant said that they couldn't you're laughing, but that's what they called those big giant green helicopters.

I love that. But they said that they didn't go into the fuselage of the plane because they were worried that it wasn't stable enough, and they were also kind of worried about booby traps that too. They had also considered putting a rope around it and having the helicopter lifted up to try and flip it over, but they didn't believe that structurally it would stand that and it would probably just crumble and be a waste of time.

So they couldn't do a whole lot. And part of the reason that it was so unstable is when Baron fifty two went down, it had about five was a fuel on board. That's a lot of fuel to burn that. I mean, that melts metal. That's one of the problem. Is it destroys, It melts people met Yes, it does bars. Okay, that's good to know. But but of course the important point here is that because and this again, this is the thing that people gravitate to, because they never went

into the rear of the plane. They never actually saw any bodies. Now, just to give you us a little bit of context here, the bodies of the men that they found in the front they were badly burned. They were really badly burned. But was it no vax? Was that the kind of suit? I their flight suits might have been it, I think, thank you, it was. It's flame retardant flight suits. The flight suits are what kept their bodies from being entirely consumed by flames. They didn't

cover everything. No, No, it's just like the black box in the plane. Why don't they just make the whole plane out of it? We have this conversation every time. Well, here's a question with the with the rear enders have also been wearing flight suits like that. I cannot say, don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I would presume that they would be wearing flight suits as well, but I would and not just in regular jumpsuits. But god knows, I don't have the military history background to

be able to answer that, unfortunately. Yeah. Um oh. So here's the other thing is that the search and rescuers when they got on the ground, they said that even though the plane had been consumed by fire, when they looked at where the rear jump door was, this is the rear door of the plane. The people climbed in and out right, and from looking at these doors it and I might be wrong, and if I'm wrong, I apologize, But appeared to me it was an opening that was

on hinges. But there was also a kickout portion of that door that in an emergency you could just punch it out there is. Yeah, it's actually actually the frame one is actually just kind of it really is just kind of a frame. Yeah, that the paratroute door that you kick out is almost Well, the point is, even even in that much heat, a portion of that kick out door should have been there. They should have seen it, and when they looked at the plane they didn't see that.

So this is corroboration from search and rescue that the door is missing, which means maybe the guys weren't there, or maybe it's like critically failed and blew out because the plane was on fire and pressure was weird. Maybe

possible as well. People will also say, well, those search and rescuers, they didn't find any of the sensitive radio equipment that was in the back of the plane, So that's proof that the guys because keep in mind, these guys' job in the event the plane is going down is to to take the equipment with them and destroy it so the enemy can't get it. But key point, if they don't go in the back of the lane, they can't confirm if that equipment is actually there. So that's

a clane that always frustrates me when I read it. Well, one of the things I wonder about too, is before they left a day, like you know, like toss a few thromigrainade into the plane to make sure that equipment was totally totally fried. I would imagine that they would not have done that because if if they jumped, the plane was still in the air, which means the men piloting the aircrafts oh no, I don't know. Search. I

don't think Search and rescue did anything. But they recovered one body or partial remains of one body, and then they had to boogie. I understand their self preservation, because I didn't understand they could also have been shot down or things like that. But I would assume that if it was so important that the enemy not gain access to this proprietary covert technology, if they weren't sure that it was not there or already destroyed, they would have

done something destroy it. So I guess for me, even though we can say like they didn't go into the back of the airplane, it didn't look like the back of the airplane was really intact that much. From the really grainy pictures you find online, Um that are I think all aerial, right, Yeah, it's one aerial photo, but you can hardly tell, but it does look like to me you can kind of see the front of it, and then the back of it just looks like it's

blown out. And maybe your impression of that was different. But so I don't know that there was necessarily a back to go into. They could have done a visual search of So, well, here's what is to get on the ground. One of them or one or two post up his guards and then only so only two of them are actually searching the plane, and they spend about fifteen plus minutes attempting to extract one of the bodies from the cockpit. So I mean that's not don't even

have a lot of time. No, that's not counting the time that they dropped. So they've already expended fifteen minutes. It's only two of them. I don't know that they really were able to do too much snooping around. But you're right, that plane was a total disaster. As they said, it's upside down, the wings are shorn off, the tail is broken off, and something like a hundred yards behind

the wreck. So they may have looked at it and went, no, nothing could have survived that fire, and there's no reason to even bother to look for the equipment. That's a very valid point. I don't know. I just react to people saying and they knew that it wasn't there because they don't actually know. Yeah, I've heard the story that they say that the parachutes were gone and the equipment was gone, But in the official thing, I don't. I don't think it's I think I'm willing to say it

was functionally gone. Ye may not have physically not been there, but it may it probably just still they sat granades, and I would agree with that. That's why we're going to be a a zombie apocalypse team. But I'm just saying, you know, to me there, I cannot imagine if it was as sensitive as it seems like it was, that

their main directive would have been find the bodies. That rather, their main objective would have been, hey, make sure that well, no that That's what I'm saying before, is that they they had it was it was multiple responsibilities. Was recover the equipment if possible or destroy it, recover and identify the bodies if possible, recover them alive, right of course,

and look for a survivors. So, but this was they were doing all of this at the time yeah, okay, So they go, they look, they recover one set of remains, and initially the U. S. Air Force lists the four men that are in the rear of the plane as missing in action. And then several days later, and by the way, this is after they've can tacked to the families and said, listen, this is what happens to your son. We believe they're missing an action. We don't have anything

to lead us to believe anything different. And the I've read the requirements from the U. S. Air Force that says they actually air on the side of missing in action rather than killed an action unless they absolutely positively can confirm somebody saying, you don't want to list somebody as dead. That isn't the paperwork alone to get somebody back alive. But so so these guys come out, the Air Force says, this is what's going on. And then suddenly eight days later, I think it's eight days after,

which is weird because it's the same number of days. Anyway, eight days later they come out and they say, oh, got no, no, those those four men they were definitely killed in action. They were definitely killed when that plane went down. And that leaves a funny taste and a lot of people's mouths because they were very the word I've seen it described as hasty, were very hasty in that decision, and things we're going to talk about it in the theory section may explain why they felt that

people feel that that was such a hasty decision. So we are now done with the story, so as always, we need to go into theories. So let's talk about the first theory. That first theory is that per the United States Air Force and all of its reporting, they told the truth and the men did actually die in the crash. Surprising, I guess. Well, and yeah, let's let's run through it because I mean, the official report says all eight of them died in the crash, and they

say that there are several things that confirm this. There's first off is the fact that there was no radio contact from the crew whatsoever, and they would have expected that. And let me clarify what they're talking about here, because first, these men are so well trained that is expected that as the plane is descending, you know, losing flight, falling

out of the sky, losing altitude, there's the word I'm looking. Yeah, okay, so it's descending if it were cabled capable of having made contact or sent out, you know, a broadcast of some kind, whether it be from the pilot or the men in the back of the plane. That should have happened automatically. Somebody should have said made a we're going down. It makes a lot of sense because you want them to know you're going down so they can come look

for you right now. Yeah, absolutely, um. And also I mean, also just to you know, drive home a point. They radioed in every time they almost got hit, right, I mean, they checked in every half hour, but more than that, you know, at thirty they said, uh, just got missed. At forty before they had to check in again, they said, just got missed again, and then silence. So you know, if somebody's shooting at them, they're going to if they're radioing to say somebody's shooting at us and missing us,

they're going to radio and say oh. Now that people do say, well, of course, you know, well something happened and the engines died, but of course the plane had batteries on it. The radios would have worked. Even if both engines had literally fallen off of the plane, it still would have continued to have electricity. To be able to send a radio signal of some kind. The only thing I can think of here is that they may have tried to be sending radio signals, but I'm guessing

that whatever hit them probably destroyed their antenna array. Now I don't I don't know enough if there is more, if there was a backup antenna. But it's like if it was literally meant to be picking up a radio signals, they brought something, But I don't know that they're necessarily broadcasting with the same equipment that they are listening with. I don't know. I don't want to run down that Alley did have a lot of different radio gear and a lot of antennas on those planes, right, So it's

so it's it's hard to say. It's like Amelia Heart. You know that you're gonna have at least well, not like Amelia Heart, she had like one, Okay, okay, you're gonna have You're gonna want to have at least two, maybe three radios for communications purposes with bass, you know,

and uh absolutely yeah. So the second kind of radio contact that was expected to be heard from these guys, if indeed they bailed out, was it should have been radio contact that was coming from what is known as air crew survival radios, and that is literally the hit a button and it just sends out an automated distress signal, Um help me something like. I mean, you know, it's if you ever seen that Owen Wilson movie Behind Enemy Lines and he's got the funny little radio find Me box.

It's an early early version of what they show in that movie. And now I'm telling you to go see that movie. It's a great movie. I just thought Williams doing a non comedy. What are we talking about here? What the hell it happened? I'm sure it was some bad contract negotiation by his agent. I don't know, but he did. It will interest you all to know they have those in all of the inflatable life boats, very similar. Yeah,

and personal flotation devices. Yeah. They're they're a little handheld about size of Milwaukee talkie and you just flipped the switch. You don't have to do anything complicated and they go off. And if these guys had bailed out, according to the Air Force, they should have been broadcasting with these things right away. You assume they would, because it'd be the way they'd be found. Haven't a set up? There wouldn't you. Yeah.

Other things that the Air Force points out, they say the condition of the aircraft because, like I said, as we've talked about a couple of times, it was upside down, and they say they're pretty sure that that plane came in nose first, and the lack of any kind of skid marks through the jungle or anything nothing like that. It appears that it fell nose first vertically and hit and boom and then flopped over on its back. It could be like maybe a wing fell off or something

like that. They went into a tail spin. Well, yeah, the Air Force thinks that it went into a tail spin. And that's actually a really important thing because if the plane is in a tail spin, from what I understand it is, would be all but impossible for those guys in the rear of the plane to be able to punch out the jump door and then be able to jump out of that plane and clear it like they wouldn't. They shouldn't have been able to get out because either

it's blowing, you know, spinning into the door. H that would you know, then create the air pressure you can't get away from. And I don't know that you'd want to jump it was spinning the other direction, because then that's just gonna throw you right into the propellers. I mean, this all sounds like really like logical reason. I guess, you know, for me, I would presume to just kind of address the fact that they, you know, took eight days to go from m I A to kill then action.

I think you know, what you were saying is true that the Air Force is very tentative to just say military yeah, and so well people should be pretty tentative to just say if they're dead. But it really what it sounds like happened to me is, you know, they found that wreckage, and they said, okay, there's a possibility that maybe, you know, without having assessed anything, there's a

possibility that maybe they bailed out. We did not conclusively find their bodies, so okay, and they went back and assessed it, and you know, came to this story where what the forensic evidence or whatever you know, said and realized, really, there's no plausible possibility that these men survived this crash and then moved them. Eight days is a reasonable amount of time to spend investigating something of this. I think I don't know that they actually investigated I mean for

eight days though? Is the point here, Devan? But even that's what people get so peeved off about is that it wasn't as if for eight days a US Air Force group spent nothing but time looking at the data and saying, Okay, what exactly happened in giving a determination? It doesn't take eight days to look at this stuff, right, they can I clarify that it would be even more suspicious to a lot of people if like a day later they were like, well, just getting killed an action,

you know what I mean. Like they had to get all of the footage, they had to take statements, they had to probably like have a couple of experts, They had to really take the time to compile all of the evidence. It's not that I'm saying they're sitting there in a room for eight days, probably not even compiling evidence for eight days realistically, but that the process could have reasonably taken eight days, and that they could have said yep. But again what I was saying earlier is

that there were there. Their manuals actually point out if you cannot confirm nobody laid eyes on what happened, you do not change them from M I A to K I a and that's what that's really what what sticks in the crawl of all of these families of these four men, and for I mean this was in nine

seventy three. For five years, these families just lived with the understanding that their sons had died in the crash when the plane went down, until in eight somebody from the U. S. Air Force called them up to tell them that there was a possibility that the men had actually gotten out and been captured by the enemy, which is something we talked about in the beginning. So let's move into theory number two, which is they actually bailed

out and we're captured, and we're captured. Exactly what happens. What's going on with this Well, there's a lot of stuff going on in it. The basics of it are that Melton, Matta, Jov Cressman, and Brandon Burg, like we said before, they parachuted out and then we're immediately captured by the People's Army of Vietnam, and then those crewman would have been considered very valuable assets, not only to the Vietnamese, but to the good buddies of Vietnamese, the

Soviet Union. They would have turned them over to them and they would have taken them back to the Moscow or wherever, and yeah, they would have. They would have gotten them out of the country because they're radio men, so they know US US Air Force codes and procedures. They have a lot of knowledge in them that you can see the Soviets really really wanting to have the opportunity to get their hands on. So that's that's kind of the general breakdown of the theory in the beginning.

And then we'll get into our our you know, thickets of bits here. So we're gonna talk about that radio communication again, uh, it said, and I'll give it to you again. It says, Group to seventeen is holding four pie let's captive, and the group is requesting orders concerning what to do with them. And then the second version is presently group to ten has four pirates. They are

going from forty four to ninety three. The things that people point out that are really interesting about that is that apparently the Vietnamese interchangeably used the words pilot and pirate all the time for guys flying planes. They considered them to be pirates, I guess is the reasoning. Well, I've heard also that they and this wasn't the Vietnamese. I thought it was like the oceans had captured these guys, they were going to turn them over to the Vietnamese.

I was the impression that it was the Vietnamese that had done it, because it was on the Hotemen trail

and therefore the Vietnamese army was flowing through there. It could have been I was thinking, well, we can agree with I just don't know, but I had heard that they used them and claysure like the word pirate could apply it to like bandits um and also just members of the opposition, like they were at the communist guerrillas operating in the area too, And apparently I heard they refer to them as pirates also, Yeah, so it was it was it was basically a word to describe the enemy,

not just a particular group. And so if pilot and pirate or miss translator to miss decoded, that could lead to confusion, which again it's obviously led up to a whole bunch in here. Um. Let's see, we had at one point in the initial reading it was group to seventeen. In the second reading it was group to ten. People say that the difference phonetically in the language between two ten and to seventeen isn't isn't much, so it could easily have been miss translated. So there's something that people

poke holes into it with. But really, what people always want to know about is, Okay, so what's up with the forty four to nine three? And that has been interpret quite a lot to mean kilometer markers along some kind of route along a road, whether it be an east west or north south road. People are saying, well, this means that what they're saying is that they were taking them from marker four kilometer marker forty four two kilometer marker nine three. But we don't know where that goes.

That's a that's a hard, hard one. You know that those also could have been just like code numbers that meant like, you know, forty four ment alive, three meant dead, and it could have been that. Then yeah, yeah, there could have been a lot of different things. I mean, it may have been coded to the degree that whoever decoded it didn't decoded correctly. It may not have had the entire key. I don't know. I mean, I have

no idea. I heard some of these. At least one of these messages was actually decode by a guy who's was Ocean was not his real primary language, and he wasn't that strong in it. Was a linguist, but I don't think it was this big language and so and so a lot of way that has been placed upon this guy's interpretation. Is he the second Is he the one who did the second interpretation? Yeah? And I can I had his name written down or something like that.

I can't remember. You don't have it written anymore. But he is apparently the one that raised the stink and got the families involved in seventy So can you I'm sorry, can you just clarify for me here? This transmission was picked up by a plane pretty far away right over, so a couple hundred miles maybe. Yeah, let's say, okay, big question, what's how do we know this is even

about this thing? We don't, okay, And that's a very good point to raise the fit from the U. S. Air Force, they say that the person who was monitoring the frequency that this original message came through on believed that all of the communication that he was listening to was actually coming out of um Vin City, which is two hundred and fifty miles away four KOs from the site from where Barren fifty two went down. People say, well,

that's an awfully long ways away to be related. I will use a grain of saualt here and say that doesn't really bother me so much, because it could have been somebody calling up the chain of command, who was then calling up the chain of command, who was then calling up the chain of commanding a game of telephone to get the message along. I'm I'm just saying that

I could see that. I'm not saying that's a serious contention, but that is one of the problems with it that it's it's not from that very very close range to the crash site, but beyond beyond that, the there were other reasons that people believe they got out of the plane and they were captured. Right, Which parts are you talking about here, because I'm looking through my lips. Well now, I mean, I'm just talking about the door being missing in the parachutes being gone and all that stuff. Yeah,

And were we through the debunking part yet? We want to go there yet? No? No, because there's a couple of things here that I find interesting that might explain

why some of the stuff is going on. So one of the reasons that okay, so if these guys get out in there immediately captured, Remember that this is just about the time that the Paris Piece Accords have gone into effect, and one of the how god, it's not a stipulation, but one of the articles of the accords is that prisoners of war will be returned and the bodies of the dead shall be repatriated. You shall send

them home. Both sides should be doing this, Okay, So this is this is what everybody wants to have happened. So if that's the case, and suddenly the US screws the pooge and drops a plane in the jungle, proving that it's doing what it's not supposed to do, you want to allow that to jeopardize the return of all those other guys. In other words, are you willing to forfeit these four for the other hundreds, if not thousands, and and and just to be clear, this is not

you talking. This is what the People the Theory says. Yeah, I mean, obviously we're not saying. It's that it's the trolley can un drum, right, do you sacrifice You've got the one person on the tracks that you care about in the twenty people the no on the on the other track, and do you like throw the switch. I don't know. It's a good question, especially on the possibility, right, it's not even it's not even uh we know for sure they're alive. It's a we think they might be live.

So are we going to sacrifice? Are we going to get caught doing this thing? Or or are we going to get our you know, thousands of POWs back like which is but yeah, I mean, you know what, I know what you're saying. Yeah, though the you know, I don't think this thing would really would have jeopardized that. That's one problem I have with this series that oh yeah, I know, there's a lot of problems. What the what

the US was doing over loud. So's what recon and all that stuff was not actually without actually wrong and really in violation of the accords anyway. I mean, well, I think they were supposed to be stopping all missions. And this is to me when I read this, it's a pretty blatant violation of stop what you're doing. Just where all things, I mean, like everybody is out, quit doing it, send everybody home. And here's all these guys at this air base that are still flying as if

nothing happened. It was just eight guys going for a plane ride. Well, this was this was one of many, many, many planes that the US had in the air, which is why you don't that not that they know of

it's just the one. Well, but they do because it could be communication because of the fact that I mean, think about this, So the Vietnamese or the Larations, they're shooting at these airplanes that they see overhead because because they're not supposed to be there, and they know they can't get in trouble for shooting one down because it's not supposed to be there in the first place. So

you're gonna deny it. And that is why people also say that because the government knew that they shouldn't have had that plane in the air, they so hurriedly changed the status from m I A to k I A because they realized that they got their hand caught the cookie jar. And you you you know, like you said,

it's that's that same conundrum. This is the problem I have with that explanation, though, is that is that you know, the U. S. Government didn't really get caught with his hand in the cookie jar, just there's a ceasefire, which means you stopped shooting at each other. It doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that you stop paying attention to what the other side is doing. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna bait it. I felt I feel personally that I

think it was in violation. But that's my personal thought, and I think that others may have felt that way according to this theory. That's somebody else in in command. I was worried about the same thing. Yeah, yeah, but I think these people are wrong. But then you know, but so let's keep moving forward, so we don't beat a dead horse. Oh yeah, let's not do that. Let's

move into what. I don't even know how to classify this next bit because it's it's kind of theory related, and it's I called it modern hinky nous because they okay, okay, so it's modern hinkiness. So okay, okay. So here's the thing. There's a piece of information that I haven't shared with our listeners that I know, you two known, I know, and that is that we went back to the crash

side of baron fifty two. It just took us twenty years to get Yeah, so well, in actually they went ninety two and the Commission report came out in ninety three. It took them like eighteen months apparently to get it all figured out. But a Senate committee sent investigators to the site, and when they got to that site, they uncovered thirty one bone fragments and tooth fragment as well as zippers and other bits of fight gear. Uh, there was four corroded revolvers, you know, the woods gone. The

medal is all corroded up. You can see the photos of these things online. They also found the d rings from eight parachutes. So they say that's evidence that the men couldn't have gotten out. But to be fair, that just means they probably didn't successfully make it to the ground. It doesn't mean they didn't out of the plane. These were in the crash site. So but I'm just saying, like it just means they didn't take parachutes with them. Doesn't mean they didn't. Oh yeah, they could have just

said see if they could fly on their own. Actually, the parachutes a stored or they were stored in the after the plane, right across the from the entrance store and the entrance or exit, depending at your point of view. And they were in a bin and there were places in the bench for a dozen shoots. Yeah, like for yeah, for twelve, might as four is a after all? Right, Well, but that's the thing is that if if indeed there's only eight shoots, where's the d rings for the extras?

That's that's the question. Well that yeah, yeah, and so. But but I mean, to some people, the presence of eight rings or d rings from eight parachutes proved that they couldn't have jumped. I mean, to other people, it doesn't prove that at all. Right, No, no, you're not, because people say they never went up with just the minimum number. They always had extras just just in case. Although you don't know, I mean that you know that they might not have had, like you know, that a

full thing either. I don't know what I mean. They might have only had ten in there. I don't know. Yeah, well, but but even it was only ten, that means they're still short. But so they get to the site, they find these d rings to prove that there was eight parachutes on board the plane when it went down. There's some other weird bits of hanky nous here, and that would be that one of the investigators, when he walked

onto the site. He said he literally looked down and he found a dog tag sitting on the ground, exposed to the elements, right in front of him, and that belonged to Joe Matta Jov. The thing is is that it was in pristine condition. Uh you know, I mean it shouldn't have been. It had been there for twenty years. It should have suffered some kind of ill effects of the weather. I don't know. I guess there's some I guess for me. You know, he could be saying, like,

and it was in pretty dang good condition. Have you seen the photo of it? It was it actually pristine? Yeah, it was in green condition. I mean I've seen dog tags that guys war for years, you know, after combat mission, you know, guys do that. They just always wear their dog tags. And they were dirty and scarred and beat up, and they looked worse than the ones I saw in

this photo. We didn't see very much compact. So playing a practical joke on these guys, Well, that's actually a really good point because it is not an unknown thing for people to see or figure out that families of men who are m I A Are coming to the area and fabric hate dog tags to sell to them. So that's not an uncommon thing, but the other not so.

On the level bit here is supposedly these guys were they were flying a sanitized mission, meaning that they shouldn't have had their dog tags on and they shouldn't have had any kind of recognizable insignias on their flight suits. Have a question the hand, then, how did they identify the four pilots? How do they know that was who they were? Were their positions in the I believe it was the positions in the plane. Okay, believe that. But so that is the way they identified them based on

their stations. Yes, so, for all we know, the rare endman could have been taking those positions, possibly realistically, just to be a totally slam slam into the ground and the four in the front or ejected right out the glass windshields in the front and the four just right into the perfect No. But I just mean, you know, for all we know, the people who bailed out were the pilots, right, I mean, if I agree, I'm just

I get it. And yes, okay, I see you know they get hit and they say, hey, you guys come forward to take the controls. We've all got to go to the bathroom. We'll be right, there's out this door. Sorry, this is in the bathroom. Um. Yeah. But it's weird that if they were supposed to be flying a sanitized mission, that this dog tag was there. Oh yeah, so that's

that's weird. The other thing that's weird is that the bone fragments that were all recovered, they couldn't really identify them to anyone, because I kid you not, they were literally fragments. They couldn't even prove that they were human. You would kind of expect that you would after twenty years and in that situation, but they said that they couldn't. They didn't know. It's not that they said they couldn't, they said they didn't want to run d n A

analysis at the time. This is so of course, technologies made leaps and bounds since then, but they didn't run d n A on them, so they couldn't confirm who or what it was. The other weird thing is that I mentioned that they found a tooth or a partial Mohler on site. Well, that moler they matched it up to Peter Trestman. Here's the odd thing is that when the the U. S. Air Force came to Peter Crestman's family and said, hey, this is this is Peter's Moehler and we have these X rays of his teeth to

prove it. They showed them X rays of a full set of teeth on the top and a full set of teeth on the bottom. The problem is, Peter Crestman didn't have all of his teeth. He was missing teeth. He had to wear a partial. So whose X ray is that that they used to match the tooth to It could have been it could have been a mistake or a fraud, or are they sure it wasn't just an earlier X ray before he got partial. I believe that before he went in to service, he already had that.

And if the partial was in his mouth when the x ratium, it would be very obvious because the partial has metal. The X ray was not from from previously. They didn't they didn't like contact family dentists back home, and everything that I have read says that that was not the case. That it was. The military had those X rays. It was there, you know, x rays he took in the military. But this is so here's the thing though, and this is I know this infuriates the

families with the all of the armed forces. Okay, I'm not just gonna point at the Air Force here, but all of the armed forces over the years have seriously dropped the ball when it came to identifying recovered remains of soldiers killed in action. There are times where they have sent parts to a family and then realized that, wait,

they sent I'm just gonna make up names here. Okay, they they said Bob's remains in place of Don's remains, But Don's remains are actually in Tim's grave, and they don't actually know where Don or the first guy's remains are. But the third guy's grave is actually filled with somebody else. And it's it's this weird, and there's no easy way to fix it, because what do you do go to family and say, we screwed up. We need to exhume your loved one and you have found closure, and now sorry,

we gotta take it away because we were wrong. No, you don't, you don't do that. I would think that they would just, you know, like there's been cases like that. I would just quietly move the bones and not tell the family my son out there. But it just it was gonna say a couple of things number one, they do screw up a lot. On the other hand, in circumstances like that, I could see where you could do that. But they also still seem to actually still be working

on this. I mean, they actually are devoting a lot of resources to trying to straighten everything out, identify everybody to the best that they can, and they are trying. Now yeah, well, I say, if you, if you listen to the families, then they say, no, they're not trying, and they're just they're trying to cover it all up. I mean, this is this is all a matter of perspective.

And I get that because if if you you know, these families came into this situation expecting things to be one way and to be given all of the information, and they feel like they've been jerked around for decades, that's bound to build up a lot of resentment. So you can see where all these families get together. I mean I read an article somewhere and somebody said, when you read one of these, you think, well, the family

is crazy and nothing is going on. And then when you talk to five or ten families and they all tell you the same story, you start to wonder what actually is going on? Is there some kind of something in the background, some plan that we don't know about, and it's a game that somebody else is playing. We just don't know the rules to. I mean, it's it

leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Well, I think there was a little bit of irresponsibility on the parts of some people, though, like you know, a lot of people really kept the story alive and kept the families excited and interested in the whole thing. When you know, my opinion, there's there's not a single shred of evidence that that they survived the plane crash. Would that there's not not one shred of evidence. I want a single one. I would say that the missing jump door is to

me a shred of evidence that it's not. To me it is, but the wings. Here's the real reason the door was probably gone is that it's very possible that it blew out in midflight when they were hit. I get that, Joe. Actually the jump door, the parador, the part that the paratroop door or whatever they call it.

Actually in Southeast Asia on those on those planes, the crews removed those all the time, and they flew without them all the time because it was so hot there that was one way to keep it kind of keep it cool in the plane. But these years you are flying at nights. An issue. But the other thing about these planes, well it may or may not be an issue.

I mean, it may well be that particular bird they pulled that door off months before, or even a year or two before, and nobody even knew where the damn door was anymore, so it couldn't even put it back. They typically flew without those doors in place. You know, I've read, I've read a lot of stuff from airman who said that the doors were there, but they always

left them unlocked so they could get out faster. Which but but to me, there's there's absolutely no reason to put a lot of any weight whatsoever on that door being missing. The search and rescue team reported that that the parachutes were gone, well, of course, but they couldn't

report those were gone because they didn't go into the plane. No. No, you can see you can see under the plane by looking through the door, because the band that holds the parachutes is right across from the door and in the fuselage of the plane. Which and every every account that I have read, the rear door, the entry exit door, the main actually exit door. They're they're right across the

jump door. Yeah, they jumped, They're right across, and that every every account that I have read of this, the search and rescue team reported that the door was missing. They also reported that the parachutes were missing. But the thing about it is, and so that's considered to be a piece of evidence to support the idea that they jumped out of the plane seeing nothing that I've I've really seen, has ever given any good in occasion that they were in that portion of the plane to be

able to identify that. My point is, they said they didn't go into the rear of the plane, so therefore it's just not a for certain which is why I'm not willing to just say, no, they didn't see them, but they didn't, you know, crawl through the body of the plane. That's That's where I'm getting at here, and that's why I'm not completely opposed to it. Yeah, and so, but my understanding was, or at least the way it's been written, and the search and rescue team reported that

the parachutes were missing, they were gone. There is some remportant that says that, but there's also reporting that said that's what I said earlier is that there's also when you read it, there's stuff that says that they never went back there. So that's why I don't completely believe it, as we see this all the time where stories are inflated in sentences and actions are added to it. Oh yeah, for sure. But but yeah, but this is used at least by some people in this little conspiracy as theory

as evidence the parachutes were missing. You know, they were reported as being missing. Whether they actually were or not is beside the point. I mean, that's what these people are all saying. They're saying the parachutes were gone, therefore they must have jumped, right. The point is, of course the parachutes were gone. They were just in a bin. I mean they just fell out. And you know, so of course they were not so they could have fallen out, they could have been incinerated in the fire. I'm not

saying that the parachutes couldn't come out all. I'm just again, I just don't feel like anybody laid eyes on them. Can I propose a new theory? Sure, it's not some vast conspiracy, it's just general incompetence could have been and that like at this point, the military is trying to make good on the mistakes and laziness of their forefathers. It could be that well, and they did try to do right by these men when they went back and

they investigated the crash site. They did bring all of those remains back, They did put them into a shared grave site at Arlington National Cemetery. They did hold a service for him. So they are trying to do what they can to recognize and honor them, and not for nothing, because I know if it were my family, I would

be piste and like need to know more. But when it comes down to it, how many people are in our military right now or even then, I'm a lot so and we're talking about four men, right And I totally understand, like from the family perspective, I don't want to say we shouldn't blah, But at the end of the day, it's like it's for four people who probably died.

Because you've seen the pictures, it probably died. And you know, at some point, I'm sure the military just kind of was like, we have so many other things going on, we cannot like, we can't have resources going into this. We've out to go. We just have to walk away from it, and then twenty years later they're trying, they're trying to make it well, yeah, and this is now, this is twenty years on since that happened, but that

would be mine, you know. There we've been a whole bunch of other conflicts, so they've got a whole other slew of hot potatoes on their hands to try and deal with. They're still looking at stuff like that. But that's what's what's really. It is sad though, that people there are I've read these stories of these families, of these people that have been trying for years. I mean, they still feel that their their loved ones are probably missing.

And I look at the story and it seems to be glaringly obvious that there's no way in hell that they that they actually didn't die in that plane crash. And it's sad that these people have spent all this time and kind of, you know, let their lives be consumed by this and you then that's the difference is you don't have the emotional attachment or why, and so sometimes that makes it easy to make a quick decision. And people have possibly been a little bit misled by

you know, some I don't know some parties. Some parties, they've been a little bit mislad um, so it's kind of sad. But yeah, I don't all right, I think those guys all die that alight, no doubt about it. Let's go ahead and wrap this up. Well no, no, no, let's go on. No, I think it's way too hot to keep going. Oh yeah, alright. Well, if you want to read some of the links about this particular episode, or any episode, you can find that on our website,

which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. And there, of course you can listen to any past episode as well as download them. Uh. There's also links for merchandise as well as our past episode list. There's an actually an entire page that's got them all in a searchable version format for you. There. Um, for those of you who are downloading somewhere else, which most of you are, you're

downloading or streaming. If you're downloading and you're doing that from something like iTunes, and you're able to leave a comment and a rating, please do we appreciate that because that allows other people to find the show. If you're streaming through like Google Play or Stitcher or what other platform it might be. If that platform allows you to do comments and ratings. Please do so. We we appreciate that we're on social media. So we are on Twitter,

we're Thinking Sideways without the G in the middle. We are on sub We've got a subreddit, but say we're on subreddit, but we have a subreddit. Uh. And then of course we have the Facebook page and the Facebook groups, so like the page, joined the group. It's always pretty busy,

always good conversations taking place. Um. And if you last but not least, if you have comments or questions or story suggestions, all of that stuff, you can always go ahead and email that to us at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. We respond to everything. Might take us a while because the inboxes appears to be constantly full these days, but we do get back, so please be patient with us. Uh. That having been said, you

guys got anything else? Alright? Alright, well, we will wrap this one up and we will talk to everybody next week. Sky Train good point.