LOCKHART, GEORGE BARRY
Remains Returned December 15, 1988, Identified May 5, 1989
Name: George Barry Lockhart
Rank/Branch: O3/US Air Force
Unit: TDY to 72 Strat Wing, Anderson AFB Guam
Date of Birth: 17 February 1947
Home City of Record: Sulphur Springs TX
Date of Loss: 21 December 1972
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 211500 1054600 (WJ795497)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 2
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: B52
Refno: 1961
Other Personnel In Incident: Charles E. Darr; (missing); James L. Lollar
(returned POW); Randall J. Craddock; Ronald D. Perry; Bobby A. Kirby (remains
returned)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 April 1991 from one or more of
the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence
with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W.
NETWORK 1998.
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS: On December 21, 1972, a B52 bomber from the 72nd Strat Wing,
Anderson AFB Guam, was sent on a bombing mission during the famed Christmas
Bombings during that month. By the 21st, when the B52 departed for the Hanoi
region, 8 B52's and several fighter bombers had been lost since December 18,
and 43 flyers had been captured or killed during the same period.
The Christmas Bombings, despite press accounts to the contrary, were of the
most precise the world had seen. Pilots involved in the immense series of
strikes generally agree that the strikes against anti-aircraft and strategic
targets was so successful that the U.S., had it desired, "could have taken
the entire country of Vietnam by inserting an average Boy Scout troop in
Hanoi and marching them southward."
A very high percentage of B52 aircrew were captured immediately and returned
in 1973, a much higher percentage than strategists imagined. Beyond that
number, several were known to have made it safely to the ground, yet did not
return for unknown reasons.
When the B52 from 72 Strat Wing, Guam was hit by a surface-to-air missile in
the early hours of December 21, 1972, the fate of the crewmembers was
varied. Multiple emergency beepers were heard by aircraft in the area,
indicating that several of the crew members had safely bailed out of the
crippled aircraft.
James Lollar was captured and subsequently released in March the following
year. The U.S. did not know he had been captured.
Ronald Perry's remains were returned exactly 3 years to the day from the day
he was shot down. The remains of Randall J. Craddock, Bobby A. Kirby, George
B. Lockhart and Charles E. Darr were returned six days short of the
sixteenth anniversary of their shoot-down. The positive identifications of
the second group to be returned was announced in August 1989.
Another returned POW, Ernest Moore, mentioned that he believed Darr had been
held at the "Zoo" in Hanoi, but the U.S. never changed Darr's status from
Missing to Prisoner. There is every reason to suspect the Vietnamese knew
what happened to all the crewmembers, but especially Charles E. Darr.
Whose radios beeped in distress from the ground that day in December 1972?
When and how did Bobby Kirby, Randall Craddock, Charles Darr, Ronald Perry
and George Lockhart die? If any of them were prisoners of war, why did we
allow the Vietnamese wait 16 years to return their remains?
George Barry Lockhart is a 1969 graduate of the United States Air Force
Academy.
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