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AMERICAN FORK — "It hasn't sunk in completely, but it's amazing."
That's what Scot Chipman said about finding out his father, U.S. Marine Capt. Ralph Jim Chipman, known as Jim Chipman to friends and family, had been accounted for — more than 50 years after he went missing in the Vietnam War.
Ralph Chipman's wife, Susan Richards, said emotions have been mixed since her family learned her husband's dog tag and some of his teeth had been found among the dirt at the crash site.
"We're certainly glad that we'll eventually have something to bury. … Having just a tiny part of him, it really means a lot to us," Richards said. "But you go through all these emotions again, and then the result is the same — he's not here."
Scot Chipman said it "eased their minds" for the family to know their dad died in the crash and was never a prisoner of war.
"It hasn't sunk in completely, but it's amazing," Scot Chipman said. In an Aug. 7 Facebook post, he added, "After 50 years the day our family has been waiting for has finally come!"
In late 1972, Capt. Chipman had been assigned to Marine All-Weather Attack Squadron 533, Marine Attack Group 12, 1st Marine Air Wing, and was stationed at MCAS Royal Thai Air Force Base in Nam Phong, Vietnam, known as the Rose Garden.
Around 8 p.m. on Dec. 27, 1972, Jim Chipman and his co-pilot, Capt. Ronald Wayne Forrester, were flying a Grumman A-6A Intruder during a combat mission over northern Vietnam when the plane stopped radio communications and never returned to base.
Search and rescue teams couldn't find the pilots or the plane. Scot Chipman was just 4 years old and his brother Matthew was around 18 months old.
Years later, in July 1974, Jim Chipman was reported as killed in action — a casualty of war.
Since that time, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has been working to account for Jim Chipman and other soldiers who were prisoners of war or went missing in action. Every year, the organization and its partners work with governments in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia to collect evidence and conduct multiple excavations in those countries.
After analyzing flight data four years ago, the agency and its partnering organizations were able to find the right spot in the Quang Binh Province where the A-6A Intruder piloted by Jim Chipman went down, Scot Chipman said.
Investigators conducted two excavations over the past few months and found Jim Chipman's dog tag, some of his teeth and a fragment of Forrester's credit card with his name on it, according to Forrester's daughter, Karoni Forrester. They also found bone fragments that are still undergoing DNA analysis.
Further excavation at the site is set to begin next June.
"We are hoping that when they analyze the DNA, that the military has in the lab now, that there's part of (Forrester), because we have a little teeny part of Jim now, and we're hoping that the Forresters are able to have a little tiny part of their dad, too," Richards said.
Ralph Chipman is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund's Wall of Faces. The family hopes to plan a funeral for the captain after his belongings and remains are returned home.
As of Wednesday, there are still 1,578 Americans who are missing or unaccounted for from the Vietnam War, according to the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. So far, the remains of more than 1,000 soldiers killed in Vietnam have been identified and returned to their families since 1973.
