SIZEMORE, JAMES ELMO

Name: James Elmo Sizemore
Rank/Branch: O4/US Air Force
Unit: 609th Special Operations Squadron
Date of Birth: 11 October 1930
Home City of Record: San Diego CA
Date of Loss: 08 July 1969
Country of Loss: Laos
Loss Coordinates: 191643N 1030913E (YG060325)
Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: A26A
Refno: 1464

Other Personnel in Incident: Howard V. Andre (missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 October 1990 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: The Douglas A26 was a twin-engine attack bomber with World War II
service. In Vietnam, it served the French in the 1950's and also the U.S. in
the early years of American involvement in Southeast Asia. In 1966, eight
A26's were deployed to Nakhon Phanom to perform hunter-killer missions
against truck convoys in southern Laos.

Maj. James E. Sizemore and Maj. Howard V. Andre Jr. comprised an A26 team
stationed at Nakhon Phanom, assigned a mission over the Plain of Jars region
of Xiangkhoang Province, Laos on July 8, 1969. Sizemore was the pilot and
Andre the navigator on the flight.

When the aircraft was about 12 miles south of the city of Ban Na Mai, it was
downed by hostile fire. A ground team subsequently furnished unspecified
information that Sizemore and Andre could not have survived. Both were
classified Killed in Action/Body Not Recovered.

Sizemore and Andre are listed among the missing because their bodies were
not recovered. The presence of enemy troops in this area makes it highly
likely that the Lao have information they could provide about their fates.

In 1973, the prisoners of war held in Vietnam were released. Laos was not
part of the Paris agreement which ended American involvement in Indochina
and no prisoners held by the Lao were ever released. Nearly 600 Americans
were left behind, abandoned by the country they proudly served.

In 1975, refugees fled Southeast Asia and brought with them stories of
Americans prisoner, missing and unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. The
reports continued to flow in as the years passed. By 1990, over 10,000
reports had been received. Some sources have passed multiple polygraph
tests, but the U.S. Government still insists that proof is not available.

Meanwhile, the Lao voice dismay about the large numbers of their people that
were killed and the fact that much of their once beautiful homeland now is
cratered like the moon from bombs dropped by American planes. They seem to
want acknowledgement that, in bombing enemy sanctuaries in Laos, we also did
great harm to the Lao people.

We are haunted by the secret war we conducted in Laos through the lives of
the Americans we left behind. Some of them are still alive. What must they
be thinking of us?

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