Wayne Bibbs - F/8

Chicago Tribune

July 26, 2006

For MIA Family, Possible Closure

Found wreckage may end long ordeal

By Jason George, Tribune staff reporter

In June of 1972, an Army captain and two helicopter crewmen--one from Illinois, the other from Indiana--were shot down over Vietnam. For 34 years, the wreckage and the men's remains were lost to the jungle.

Now, Defense Department investigators believe they've located the site of the downed chopper and appear one step closer to ending a long wait filled with frustrating dead ends and false leads.

Pfc. Wayne Bibbs of Blue Island was the door gunner in the cramped Hughes Cayuse helicopter that was on a scouting mission near the Laotian border.

Bibbs, who had left Eisenhower High School for the Army and Southeast Asia, was just three days short of his 18th birthday when the helicopter was downed June 11.

His disappearance, and the fact that his body was never recovered, caused decades of anguish for his now-deceased parents and three siblings, brother Andrei Bibbs said Tuesday from his Chicago home.

"My mother was always trying to find out, going to MIA/POW meetings in Washington, D.C., and Missouri," Bibbs said, adding that she died a decade ago. "We were always searching," he said. "We always wondered."

Margarete Holm--whose husband, Capt. Arnold "Dusty" Holm, was the helicopter's pilot--learned of the findings on Saturday from representatives of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, which heads the recovery efforts for lost soldiers.

"As soon as I walked in, they all had huge smiles on their faces and said they had good news," she said by telephone from her home in Lebanon, Pa. "They had just gotten the report a day or so before."

That report says that on July 7, search crews located an approximately 200-by-260-foot crash site that contains a helmet, ammunition, portions of an M-16 rifle and, most importantly, the wreckage of a Cayuse helicopter, unusually configured with three seats.

"My husband's helicopter had three seats," Holm said. "They are quite positive this is the right one because no other one has the three seats.

"They can't be 100 percent sure until the DNA is analyzed, but they are 99 percent sure," she said.

Troy Kitch, a JPAC spokesman, shared Holm's cautious optimism. "We believe we have found the site," he said.

This month's search, which Holm said was the last one planned, came after several years of fruitless trips in Vietnam's remote jungles--some just meters from the recently discovered site.

Confirmation that the wreckage is that of the helicopter carrying Holm, Bibbs and Spc. Robin Yeakley, of South Bend, Ind., will not come until next year at the soonest, Kitch said. A recovery team, which can't do its work until after the upcoming rainy season, needs to visit the site in hopes of finding some remains, he said. Whatever is recovered would have to be analyzed.

"The bottom line is that until our forensic experts back here in the lab get ahold of it, we don't know," Kitch said.

Andrei Bibbs was 14 when his older brother left for Vietnam. "I looked up to him. He was my mentor. I really miss him," he said.

If remains are recovered, Bibbs said he would bury his brother at Burr Oaks Cemetery in Alsip.

There, in death, Wayne Bibbs would be reunited at last with his parents.