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HONOLULU - Natalie Anderson Rauch remembers her dad as a funny man who loved to make everyone laugh and was the life of the party. She remembers living in England as a child and trips to the beach with her family. Beyond that, her memories are nearly nonexistent.
Rauch was eight years old when her father’s plane went missing in North Vietnam.
“My dad was in the Air Force and always wanted to be a pilot,” said Rauch. “He was in for about 11 years before he went to Vietnam.”
Col. Warren Anderson and his copilot, 1st Lt. James Tucker, were flying an RF-4C Phantom conducting reconnaissance when they went off the radar, April 26, 1966.
Rauch said it was normal for the plane to go off the radar at a certain point, but that night they never came back. Due to the conditions of where the pilots went missing, she is still unsure, nearly 50 years later, if they crashed on land or in water, or what their ultimate fate was.
“It wasn’t until 1973 and the prisoners of war were released that we knew for sure they weren’t coming home,” said Rauch. “My mom hoped for seven years that he was a POW - that he was coming home. She even stayed in the same house.”
Rauch is married to an Army chaplain, and has lived in Honolulu for about 18 months. She lives only a few miles from Glenda Tucker, the widow of her father’s copilot.
Tucker and her husband were high school sweethearts. She was 25 and a mother of two when her husband’s plane went missing. She remembers him as the football jock who was adored by all the girls and worked hard.
“He was at the top of his class in pilot training, so he got to pick the plane he wanted to fly,” said Tucker. “It was such a hard decision; we had a dartboard and we put the pictures of what he thought he might want to fly on there, and we threw darts on it to decide.”
Tucker’s dart landed on the Phantom, which was known for its high visibility due to heavy exhaust, making their plane virtually defenseless in enemy territory.
Rauch and Tucker met for the first time just over a year ago and have kept in contact ever since, sitting next to each other and connecting again at a government update briefing held by the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency, in Honolulu, Jan. 25. Briefings are held throughout the country several times a year to update families of missing service members of their loved ones’ cases.
Though they both are hoping for closure, and to bring home their loved ones, they are not holding onto expectations that a recovery will ever be made. The plane went missing in a tumultuous area, and with little information of the exact location, there is not enough information to begin a recovery operation, said Rauch.
Tucker spoke of how much her husband adored flying, that it was his passion, which kept her from ever really seeing the dangers of it.
“He lived to fly,” said Tucker. “I don’t think I ever realized how dangerous it was- I was young. He never indicated that it was anything ever than a holiday.”
Both pilots’ names are etched into the Court of the Missing at the Punchbowl Cemetery in Honolulu. Rauch was able to take one of her brothers to see their father’s name when he visited for Christmas. And though they may never know the circumstances of their loved ones’ loss, they still have come to their own personal closure.
“Being in Hawaii is quite an experience as far as bringing closure - just knowing that it’s going to stay there, that marble etching,” said Rauch. “That’s going to stay there forever.”
| Date Taken: | 01.25.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 02.22.2016 21:49 |
| Story ID: | 188453 |
| Location: | HONOLULU, HI, US |
| Hometown: | CAMDEN, MI, US |
| Hometown: | SUMTER, SC, US |
| Web Views: | 48 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Families of missing Air Force pilots connect in Hawaii, by SFC Kristen Duus, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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