Missing soldier 'may be in Hawaii' | NEWS.com.au AN Australian army team is in Vietnam following leads in the search for the remains of Private David Fisher, one of three Australian servicemen still missing from the Vietnam war. One rumour being investigated is that he might have been taken alive by enemy forces. The latest investigation follows the recovery of the remains last year of Lance Corporal John Gillespie, killed in a helicopter crash in April 1971, and Lance Corporal Richard Parker and Private Peter Gillson, both killed in fighting in 1965. Still missing are Pte Fisher, as well as Pilot Officer Robert Carver and Flying Officer Michael Herbert, both killed when their Canberra bomber disappeared in 1970. Pte Fisher, 23, a national service member of the Special Air Service Regiment, was part of a five-man patrol operating near the Nui May Tao Mountains in South Vietnam's Phuoc Tuy province on September 27, 1969. His unit encountered a much larger North Vietnamese force and the patrol leader called in choppers to evacuate his soldiers. A hovering RAAF Iroquois helicopter dropped ropes to which patrol members attached themselves. As the helicopter flew away, Pte Fisher fell to the ground. Reports then and since suggested he could not have survived the 30-metre fall. But intensive searches in the days that followed failed to find any trace of the soldier. Head of the army history unit, Roger Lee, said sources in Vietnam had provided suggestions about what might have happened to Pte Fisher. Two members of the unit are now in Vietnam following up leads with the government office which deals with those missing from the Vietnam conflict. "One of the leads that we are still checking out is that his remains had been recovered and sent back to Hawaii as part of the United States MIA (missing in action) recovery operations," Mr Lee said. "One of the rumours suggests that the Viet Cong took Fisher away from the site where he was found. One source says he was still alive. We have no evidence of that. I don't know. No-one knows." Mr Lee said Vietnamese authorities were providing full cooperation. "They can't do enough for us," he said. The area in which Pte Fisher went missing is fairly well defined, but that can't be said of the search for the missing RAAF personnel. Their aircraft disappeared from radar screens as it returned from a bombing mission north of Da Nang on November 3, 1970. There was no distress call and no wreckage has ever been found. One theory suggests it disintegrated at altitude, possibly when hit by a missile, with debris spread over a wide area. Jim Bourke, a Vietnam veteran whose organisation Operations Aussies Home launched last year's successful MIA recovery operations, said he was now trying to galvanise interest in a proper investigation through the Vietnamese authorities. "Someone might have stumbled across a big lump of metal but you don't know unless you ask," he said.
I do hope they recover the rest of the those stil missing in action. It is only right and proper that they receive a proper burial and they families can have access to thier loved ones and even get some closure for them.
