Word: scharf
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Members of Scharf's family believe they spotted him in an East German film of American POWs made during the war. A figure who appears onscreen for perhaps one second has what they say is Scharf's characteristic waddling walk. Lowerison also has a paper, found in her brother's service records, that she has been told is a "CIA report." It lists her brother as one of 12 POWs identified by the agency in the same film...
...case, the one the Pentagon lists as 0158. The joint team had interviewed witnesses who had seen a jet explode in midair, others who found two dead bodies at the crash site and others who claimed that they had buried the two pilots. The Vietnamese investigators concluded that Scharf and Massucci both died when their plane crashed into Suoi Pai Mountain...
...visit to the American Office for POW-MIA Affairs, set up last summer in Hanoi's Boss Hotel, cast some doubt on that conclusion. Bell, head of the office, said the pilot of an F-4C flying in formation with Scharf's had reported that he saw a parachute fully deployed. That meant one of the crew could have survived and may have been taken prisoner. Because Scharf's body was never located, said Bell, "our conclusion was that further efforts are warranted." But one of the office's investigators later insisted, "Both of them are dead...
Early in 1991 Phe and three of his sons had done some digging at the Scharf crash site. They trekked to Suoi Pai from their village on the other side of the mountain and made a few small excavations on either side of the plot that someone else had already uncovered. Sifting through the dirt from the earlier dig, Phe says, he found a zipper "still working" and some eyelets from a boot. A tantalizing lead, but, as is so often the case in these investigations, another dead end. On the way back down the mountain, says Phe, his sons...
Later in Hanoi, Bell commiserated with us about the frustrating journey: "That's pretty typical. We get right down to the wire and then can't find the remains." He said the American MIA office in Hanoi would like to excavate the Scharf crash site, because even if most of the bones have been removed, it is possible that a few teeth or other fragments might remain. But it would be next to impossible to lug the necessary gear up the mountain, and Vietnam's Soviet-built helicopters are too large and unreliable to risk setting down in that treacherous...