GRACE, JAMES WILLIAM

Name: James William Grace
Rank/Branch: O3/US Air Force
Unit: 
Date of Birth: 20 December 1939
Home City of Record: New Iberia LA
Date of Loss: 14 June 1969
Country of Loss: Laos
Loss Coordinates: 164300N 1060000E (XD105644)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: F4D

Other Personnel In Incident: (none missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 April 1990 from one or more of the
following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with
POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.

SYNOPSIS: Air Force Capt. James W. Grace was the pilot of an F4D Phantom
fighter/bomber. The aircraft was one of the most advanced of its kind for the
time. Its computers controlled navigation and enabled precise television and
laser-guided bombing. Its speed topped Mach 2. Many pilots envied Grace's job.

Jim Grace once told a friend that if he were ever shot down, captured and held
for several years, he would start a new life rather than disrupt his family if
he learned his wife had remarried.

Shortly afterward, on June 14, 1969, Grace was flying a mission over Laos when
his plane went down about 10 miles west of Muang Xepone (Sepone), Laos. His
backseater, who would have been the first to eject, is not missing, so it is
assumed he was rescued safely.

Government documents show Grace's "last known location" in Laos 40 miles away
from the spot where he was shot down and where colleagues tried to rescue him,
an attempt the government says killed Capt. Grace when he fell from the
helicopter hoist lifting him out of the jungle. When pressed, the Pentagon
reinterpreted its geographical data to bring Capt. Grace back to a latitude and
longitude closer to the crash site.

Throughout the early years Jim was missing, his wife, Lillian, sifted through
government statements about her husband, attempting to sort out what happened
and what the chances were that he survived. One document says "the possibility
definitely exists that he could be alive," an assessment made after witnesses
claimed to have seen Capt. Grace fall 300 feet to 500 feet from the helicopter
hoist.

Someone must have agreed with that assessment, because Capt. Grace, who had been
classified Missing in Action (rather than Killed/Body Not Recovered), wasn't
declared dead for seven years.

Three years after he was shot down, Mrs. Bickel discovered "Photograph No. 77"
in a government "mug book" of unidentified Americans held captive in North
Vietnam or Laos. She thought the man in the photograph was her husband. The
photo had been taken in North Vietnam by a Soviet film crew. The US government
gently replied that three other families claimed the man in the photograph was
their relative and that no positive identification could be made. Mrs. Bickel
didn't agree and found two witnesses who also said the man in the photo was
James Grace. She believed the photographs proved that her husband had been taken
prsoner. The Pentagon denied her claim.

But the paper trail doesn't end there. An Air Force form dated November 1, 1972,
shows that Capt. Grace's medical and personnel records were ordered transmitted
to Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi in anticipation of his eventual return.
This document lists him as a "repatriated MIA." Air Force officials claim to
have prepared more than 1,000 such documents for returning MIAs and POWs. If so,
the preparation of those forms may indicate, as Mrs. Bickel says, that the
government fully expected those men, including Capt. Grace, to return. Jim Grace
did not return in the general prisoner release in 1973. In fact, even though the
Pathet Lao stated publicly that they held "tens of tens" of American prisoners,
not one of these men were released -- or negotiated for.

Lillian Grace, after many years of hard work and disappointment in trying to
solve the mystery of her husband's disappearance, remarried and started a new
life.

Then on June 14, 1982, Lillian Grace Bickel received a postcard from Hawaii. It
was blank except for the postmark, the typewritten address and the inscription
referring to the photograph on the front: "After years of dormancy, the volcano
Mauna Loa comes to life."

When Mrs. Bickel turned the card over, she "started shaking and went into shock.
In the blue sky over the volcano, someone had printed the tiny initials "JMJ."
Lillian and Jim, who were childhood sweethearts, used to write the letters "JMJ"
on test papers for good luck. JMJ stood for Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Lillian
stopped the practice after the eighth grade, but not Jim. The three letters
"were of such a personalized nature that only I would have recognized the
significance," Lillian said. She believes Grace, either himself or through an
intermediary, was telling her he was alive. The card postmarked on the 13th
anniversary of Jim Grace's shootdown.

Lillian Bickel, although remarried, never gave up the search for her first
husband. She says, "If he's alive, I want to make contact with him. He has two
very fine children" and "it would make their lives complete" if they could meet
their father.

In early 1990, Lillian Bickel sought action through a new congressional inquiry
initiated by North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms. The old photos she believed were
Jim Grace were given to a noted Colorado forensic anthropologist, Dr. Michael
Charney, for comparison with other photographs of Grace.

Dr. Charney not only said the man in photo No. 77 is James Grace, but also
states that the man could not have been any of the men the other three families
claimed he was. Charney pointed to Capt. Grace's receding hairline, a
characteristic of male-pattern baldness. Other witnesses recognized Capt.
Grace's hairline, posture, the shape of his nose and his flight-suit sleeves --
pushed up on his forearms, a Jim Grace trademark.

Confronted with these witnesses, the Defense Intelligence Agency changed the
date on which the photograph was said to have been taken. DIA's story is that
the man in the photograph couldn't be Capt. Grace because the photo was lifted
from a communist propagenda film made before he was shot down, then given to the
Defense Intelligence Agency six weeks later, after Capt. Grace went down. If so,
why didn't the government officials know this when they obtained the film nearly
20 years ago?  Why was the film dated incorrectly in the DIA's "mug book"?

Today, contrary to witness reports that state Grace could have survived,
Government officials insist that Capt. Grace was killed in the rescue attempt.
"I can get you up in a helicopter to 300 feet and let you step out," one Defense
Department official confidently says. Mrs. Bickel concludes that the man on the
hoist may not have been her husband.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Bickel's frustrating case is not isolated or unusual. Many
other POW/MIA cases have much in common: documents and eyewitness accounts that
reveal information about missing servicemen the government has been keeping from
family members. Although a government commission chaired by former DIA chief
Lt.Gen. Eugene Tighe reported in 1986 that a large volume of evidence points to
the likelihood that Americans are being held against their will in Vietnam, the
Pentagon so far seems to have been mightily unimpressed by such people as Mrs.
Bickel.

The fate of Capt. James Grace may never be known, but the nagging question
remains: What happened? And if Lillian Bickel's questions are hopelessly naive
or out of line, why can't she get straight answers to them? And if men are
alive, why are we not bringing them home?
