‘We do know he’s gone’; new docs could help Pennsylvania man learn what happened to cousin shot down over Vietnam

HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — Just finally knowing what’s not the case has provided some measure of closure to the cousin of an American pilot shot down in 1965 over Vietnam.

Now Larry Christian of Fairview Township in York County hopes a 30-year trove of documents he sought , and has now received, could lead him to what did happen to David Christian — first cousin to Larry’s dad, 99-year-old Truman Christian — after the North Vietnamese shot down David Christian’s Skyhawk in 1965.

Start with what did not happen: Even though Larry Christian is rather certain David Christian did not die immediately after his aircraft was hit, Larry Christian is just as certain David Christian is not somehow living out his last days as an aging prisoner of war.

“We do know he’s gone,” Larry Christian said. “it’s just, when and what his fate was, is what we’re trying to zero in on.”

Christian — aided by Eric Epstein, an advocate best known as the head of Three Mile Island Alert, Inc. — asked the office of Senator John Fetterman to help obtain the U.S. military documents he thought could elaborate on suspicions first raised after a Russian newspaper reported David Christian had been captured alive. The formal inquiry into Christians death lasted until 1994, but no one outside the military knew the details or the conclusion.

Sure enough, Christian now has a three-inch-thick binder of declassified documents.

“I was pleasantly surprised how much help [Fetterman’s office] gave,” Christian said. “And I was also surprised at the amount of effort the DPAA [Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency] put into getting me the records. They called me several times to make sure that I felt I got all the records.”

Christian is working his way through the documents, which he says contain “forensics, map locations and coordinates, eyewitness accounts — and they’re starting to answer a lot of questions” including already giving him enough information to believe David Christian eventually died — just not as a direct result of being shot down.

Epstein, often a critic of government agencies, shared Christian’s positive assesment of how the Senate office and the military have handled the inquiry.

“There are two positive takeaways from this episode,” Epstein said. One, “here’s an example of government working on behalf of citizens. Two and most importantly, it goes to show the lengths that the country will go to get answers about those who are missing. I think for folks out there who have someone who’s missing and the status is not clear, it gives them hope.”

Christian agreed about the impact beyond his own family, which he says has talked at gatherings about David Christian’s fate for 59 years.

“I think it it bodes well for all people who were missing during all wars — not just Vietnam — and it shows they’re still they’re still looking for answers,” Christian said.

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Next to the new documents, Christian displays a rubbing — on a piece of paper — of the etching of David Christian’s name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. Because names on the wall are listed not in alphabetical order but in the order people were believed to have died, the names of the men who more certainly died that day in 1965 trying to rescue Christian surround Christian’s name on the wall.

“It’s like they’re forever enshrined together,” Larry Christian said.

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