Retrieval mission planned for Kennewick High graduate shot down in Vietnam

After decades of waiting, the family of Air Force pilot San D. Francisco recently received news his case is cleared for a U.S. Department of Defense POW/MIA retrieval mission in Vietnam.

But it’s unclear when this will happen.

The Kennewick High graduate disappeared Nov. 25, 1968, when the plane he was piloting was shot down over North Vietnam.

Francisco, who was born in Burbank and graduated from Central Washington State College, was assigned to the elite 555th Fighter Squadron in Thailand and due to return to his then young wife, Kay, and 4-year-old son, Tod, on Dec. 1, 1968.

Though he had completed his required 100 missions, he didn’t hesitate to volunteer for a reconnaissance-escort mission near the Ban Karai pass along the border between North Vietnam and Laos.

His Phantom F-4D fighter jet was shot down, and he was forced to eject with another pilot, but his parachute did not deploy fully.

As he was captured by enemy forces, he was hit and killed by a mortar from an American search and rescue mission, which was driven off by heavy ground fire.

Francisco was posthumously promoted to the rank of major.

Briefing in D.C.

His sister, Terri Francisco-Farrell of Kennewick, has spent years trying to bring him home. She had a breakthrough this year, starting when the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency briefed her on progress made on her brother’s case during meeting of the National League of Families in June in Washington, D.C.

During that meeting, she and her niece, Michele Herron, were informed a previous investigative report which offered a detailed map of the crash area using reports from an alleged eyewitness was in question.

Francisco-Farrell only had 30 minutes with the analyst until the next family arrived, and left the meeting with unanswered questions.

With help from an Air Force casualty officer, she was able to talk with Army Lt. Gen. Michael S. Linnington, the director of the new POW/MIA agency. He arranged another meeting with the analyst the next day. An aide from U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse’s office was in attendance.

The analyst, happy to have more time, assured the family he planned to sort through all the witness accounts to correlate the information and plot the coordinates of the sites mentioned. More than 35 investigations have been conducted on Francisco’s case from 1995 to 2015, and 11 witnesses have provided a combination of first-hand and hearsay information.

Francisco-Farrell received a 23-page report late this summer, with the news there were two burial sites connected to her brother. The analyst recommended both sites to the agency’s Excavation Decision Board for approval. The board met a few weeks later and gave its OK.

Francisco-Farrell said she’s been told her brother is not on the excavation list for fiscal year 2016, but she is hoping things might change. She and other supporters are starting a letter writing campaign to encourage the agency to bring him home sooner.

It’s a big step — last year at this time supporters weren’t even sure the Department of Defense would be willing to put the pilot on the retrieval list.

“The scenery keeps changing,” she said. “The last four years, it’s been a maze to get through it.”

Interest growing

It’s been a long road, but Francisco-Farrell said she’s been encouraged by the newly revamped POW/MIA agency, and the attention staff and officers have paid to the case.

Interest is growing. The Las Vegas Review-Journal did a series of stories about the search for her brother in June. A pilot who flew over the crash area after the plane went down reached out after the stories ran, and Francisco-Farrell relayed that information to the DOD. Others connected to him have come forward, too.

Oct. 18 was declared San D. Francisco Day by Kittitas County commissioners.

Francisco-Farrell said she’s thankful for all the interest and work done on behalf of her brother’s case.

“With enough awareness from San’s friends, the community and the state, we’re closer to bringing the number (of unaccounted Americans from the Vietnam War) to 1,626,” she said.

Francisco-Farrell knows there are other families of POW/MIAs who haven’t had the time or ability to work through the red tape her family has, and wants to help others in her position. Once a retrieval mission is approved and set in motion, she plans to go to Vietnam with a film crew that will be putting together a documentary.

“What I hope to do with this is help others,” she said.

This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 9:49 AM with the headline "Retrieval mission planned for Kennewick High graduate shot down in Vietnam."