Featured Image Credit: Robert Christopher / Stockimo / EM_photo / Alamy Stock Photo
Topics: US News
Harley Young
It's been 60 years since an aircraft with 107 people on board went missing without a trace.
The Flying Tiger Line Flight 739 was en route to Saigon as part of a secret mission during the Vietnam War.
The flight would never reach its destination and no one knows where the aircraft's wreckage is located - becoming one of the biggest aviation mysteries to happen in the Vietnam War era.
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Hardly anything is known about what happened to FTLF 739 on 16 March 1962, and the names of those who were sadly lost on the flight have not been added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.
A private citizen, Morrill Worcester, decided to erect a monument to honour the names of those lost on his land in Columbia Falls, Maine.
“When I first heard the story about this mission, I was shocked to learn that nothing has been done for these families,” said Worcester.
“I said that day, that we would do something to make sure these people are honoured and remembered, and to hopefully give some closure to these families."
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This is the only monument that currently pays its respects to those lost. However, the families of those that disappeared are trying to right that.
“There’s nothing, no trace of anything,” said Jennifer Kirk, niece of an Army Ranger on board the flight on that fateful day when it went missing.
“They’re being pushed aside to be forgotten. That’s incomprehensible. They can’t be forgotten.”
Jennifer Kirk goes on to explain how her uncle was chosen by 35th US president John F. Kennedy to be on the special mission as 'part of an elite team'.
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In an interview with Local 4 News Detroit, Jennifer shares the heartbreaking story of how her uncle was reluctant to leave for the mission and kept coming back to hug his family before saying he had to go and didn't know when he would be back.
Little did they know that would be the last time they would see each other.
Jennifer went on to explain how, for the sergeant's mother, the news of the missing plane was 'too much'.
"She'd never accepted it. For the full time, from that moment until she passed, she always swore that he was coming home," Jennifer said.