THE WALL OF FACES

Thank you for your service to our country so long ago sir. I am heartened you returned home after the passage of so many years though I wish it had been under very different circumstances. May you rest in eternal peace.

My name is Patti and I work in the office of New York State Assemblymember Kevin Cahill. Our office is planning an event to honor those who were killed in Vietnam that were from our district, which encompasses most of Ulster County and Northern Dutchess. As such, we are hoping to get in touch with any of the surviving family members or close friends of this individual. Should anyone that reads this know how to contact them, we would greatly appreciate it if, with the family or friend’s permission, we could be given a means of reaching out to them. Our office can be contacted by phone at 845-338-9610 or email at [email protected]. Thank you.

Never forgotten.

Welcome Home

Dear Lt Michael Newell, Thank you for your service as an Unrestricted Line Officer - Pilot on the USS TICONDEROGA, and for graduating from Annapolis. I am glad you were identified in 2006. Welcome Home. Saying thank you isn't enough, but it is from the heart. It’s a New Year, but not necessarily better. Time passes quickly. Please watch over America, it stills needs your strength, courage and faithfulness, especially now. Rest in peace with the angels.

LT Michael T. Newell was a U.S. Navy pilot assigned to Fighter Squadron 194 (VF-194) aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga (CVS-14). On December 14, 1966, a Navy Alpha strike from the Ticonderoga was targeted against a vehicle depot at Van Dien, about 5 miles west of Hanoi in North Vietnam. The fighters in the flight were tasked with providing combat air patrol (CAP) over the target area while the bombers worked the target. LT Newell was flying an F-8E Crusader (#149148) while over the target when he was hit by fragments from an SA-2 surface-to-air missile. Newell advised his flight lead that his aircraft was handling well, turned south to egress the target area, and began a climb from the 6,000-foot CAP orbit to a higher altitude. A few minutes later he advised that he had lost hydraulic pressure, and comrades watched helplessly as his Crusader entered into uncontrolled flight and dove into the ground from an altitude of about 17,000 feet. Newell did not eject before ground impact. Since he was not injured by the SA-2 impact, it may have been that G-forces from the uncontrolled flight prevented him from ejecting. The jet went down near the border between Nghe An and Thanh Hoa Provinces in southcentral North Vietnam. The flight leader did not hear an emergency beacon signal. He stayed in the area and determined that Newell did not escape from the aircraft prior to the crash. His remains were not recovered. Between 1993 and 2002, joint U.S./Socialist Republic of Vietnam (S.R.V.) teams led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) visited the area of the incident five times to conduct investigations and survey the crash site. They found pilot-related artifacts and aircraft wreckage consistent to an F-8 Crusader. In 2004, a joint U.S./S.R.V. team began excavating the crash site. The team was unable to complete the recovery and subsequent teams revisited the site two more times before the recovery was completed in 2006. As a result, the teams found human remains and additional pilot-related items. Among other forensic identification tools and circumstantial evidence, scientists from JPAC also used dental comparisons which lead to a positive identification on November 27, 2006. [Taken from coffeltdatabase.org, pownetwork.org, and usnamemorialhall.org]