Military.com wrote:
Military Searches For Gulf War Pilot
Associated Press
January 12, 2004
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Military search crews have returned to the site where Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher's fighter jet crashed 13 years ago, while captured Iraqi officials, including Saddam Hussein, are being questioned about the fate of the missing flier.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who has worked to get answers for Speicher's family and friends, said crews are actively looking for the Jacksonville man, whose plane went down Jan. 17, 1991, about 100 miles north of the Saudi Arabian border.
The FA-18 Hornet was the first jet shot down in the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq.
Navy officials said crews have checked more than 50 sites, including hospitals, prisons, security archives, homes and the crash site, said Lt. Mike Kafka, a Navy spokesman. "The Navy remains extremely interested in information regarding Capt. Speicher," he said.
Nelson said he was heartened when he heard Saddam and other high-level Iraqi officials had been questioned about Speicher, although Saddam has denied knowledge of Speicher's fate.
Kafka said all detained officials and hundreds of lower-level officials, civilians, defectors and refugees have been questioned.
"Sooner or later, somebody is going to talk," said Nelson, who believes Speicher could still be alive. "I hope so. With each passing day, it diminishes that possibility."
Recently, crews revisited the crash site for the first time since 1995. At that time they found the canopy, wings, unexploded ordnance, but the cockpit was missing. Nelson said he could not comment on what, if anything, was found in the second search.
Some believe Speicher was killed when a surface-to-air missile knocked his fighter jet from the sky. There was evidence, however, that he ejected from his damaged aircraft.
Speicher was 33 when he was shot down. He held the rank of lieutenant commander at the time; he has since been promoted to captain. His wife, Joanne, has remarried and his children are now teenagers.
His status changed from missing in action to killed in action, but in 2002 it was changed again to missing-captured. A marker has been placed on an empty grave at Arlington National Cemetery.
"We hold out hope that Scott is still alive," Speicher's cousin, Teresa Engstrom of Minneapolis, said in an e-mail. "Failing that, I would hope that the family and all those wonderful supporters can at least know what happened."
It'd be great if they could actually find him alive but personally I think he's been dead for a long time even if he managed to eject.
I agree it would be nice to find him alive, but there is no reason to believe he is. I dont know of any reason why he would have been kept alive for so long.
Isn't there also conterversy over how he was shot down? I've heard it was a SAM and I've heard it was a Mig-25 and that nobody wants to admit an air-to-air loss. Which sounds kinds silly to me.
With all the assets that were in the area at the time it shouldn't be too hard to tell whether he was shot down by a Mig-25 or a SAM.
This is really the first time I've heard anything about him being shot down by a Mig. Everything I'd heard from a few months afterwards on was that they thought he got hit by a SAM.
By the pricking of my thumb,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks.
Tsyroc wrote:With all the assets that were in the area at the time it shouldn't be too hard to tell whether he was shot down by a Mig-25 or a SAM.
This is really the first time I've heard anything about him being shot down by a Mig. Everything I'd heard from a few months afterwards on was that they thought he got hit by a SAM.
Maybe reviewing the last words he radioed back to his aircraft carrier could clear the confusion. If he was engaged by a MiG he might have reported that since aircraft are signnificant targets.
I have to tell you something everything I wrote above is a lie.
There was almost without a doubt a MiG-25 in the area, because another F/A-18 in the formation spent several minutes chasing it around the sky. The thing was the AWACS didn't see it, and wouldn't clear the pilot to shoot. Eventually the MiG was lost by the Hornet and it returned to formation, it was IIRC about ten minuets later that Speicher was shot down. It could have been a SAM, heck a SAM launched in EO mod might explain why there was no warning or message from the pilot, but that's unlikely given that they where flying over some fairly empty destert. Far more likely the MiG came back around and hit him with an infrared missile, which would also provide no warning if it managed to lock on without radar.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
