This Day in History: The Flying Tiger Line Flight 739 disappeared with all 107 passengers on this day in 1962.
Flying Tiger Line Flight 739 was a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation propliner chartered by the United States military that disappeared on March 16, 1962, over the Western Pacific Ocean. The aircraft was transporting 93 U.S. soldiers and three South Vietnamese from Travis Air Force Base, California to Saigon, Vietnam. After refueling at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, the Super Constellation was en route to Clark Air Base in the Philippines when it disappeared. All 107 aboard were declared missing and presumed dead.
The day prior "marked the first day of the Vietnam War Campaign, according to U.S. Army historians. It was a time when the U.S. was quietly increasing its presence in Vietnam, sending advisers and equipment, such as those on Flight 739, to bolster the government of the Republic of Vietnam against the VietCong insurgency.
'There’s nothing, no trace of anything,' said Jennifer Kirk, niece of an Army Ranger who was on board Flight 739.
Sixty years later, there’s still little trace that the lives of the service-members were even lost to the Vietnam War. Their names have been excluded from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., a wrong their families are trying to right.
'They’re being pushed aside to be forgotten,' Kirk said. 'That’s incomprehensible. They can’t be forgotten.'" Source
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