Decades After War's End, Brother's Fate Unknown

Albany Times Union - Albany, NY, USA

By BOB GARDINIER, Staff writer
First published in print: Tuesday, December 9, 2008

STEPHENTOWN — For 40 years Pat Mohos has hoped her brother might be found.

Vietnam War fighter co-pilot Lt. Col. John Overlock was 32 on Aug. 16, 1968, when he was shot down near the DMZ. There was no trace of him until May, 2005, when the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command told Mohos that what could be some of Overlock's remains had been found at a site where an aircraft seat with a serial number matching Overlock's was found. The Central Identification Laboratory at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii then collected DNA samples from Mohos to compare to the remains. No other identifying characteristic were available from the remains.

After years of waiting the word came down recently. Air Force Staff Sgt. Elizabeth Feeney, a spokeswoman for the base, has confirmed that the DNA was not a match.

"It's been so long I'm kind of well adjusted to it now," said Mohos, 71. "I just wanted to know before I go."

She last saw her brother when he went off for his second tour in 1967 with the U.S. Air Force 37th Tactical Fighter Wing. He volunteered to fly the two-seater F-100F Super Sabre spotter jet aircraft patrolling the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail on search-and-destroy missions looking for enemy anti-aircraft installations.

His very risky job was to fly the slower aircraft and get the enemy to turn on the radar to aim their anti-aircraft guns and missiles at his craft, which would expose their locations to U.S. on-board radar detectors. Faster F-105 Thunderchiefs would then fly in to attack the targets.

On the day he disappeared, Overlock and his pilot, Maj. Michael O. McElhannon, were conducting a mission just north of the DMZ, according to Bob Reiter, veterans affairs coordinator for Rensselaer County who wrote a short history of Overlock's service.

"It was very hard on my mother all those years of not knowing," Mohos said.

The secretary of the Air Force approved presumptive findings of death for Overlock in October 1975 and for McElhannon in February 1979. During this time McElhannon was promoted to colonel and Overlock to lieutenant colonel.

The Stephentown native was cited for bravery in his efforts in directing U.S. warplanes.

On the homefront, during the time Overlock was MIA, his family spent years campaigning to get more help for those missing in action.

In the 1970s, his late parents, Francis and Theresa Overlock, bought television and radio spots to publicize the plight of their son and other POW/MIAs.

Theresa wrote a letter to President Richard Nixon criticizing his handling of the Vietnam War and what she called his "feeble attempts" to get war prisoners released.

"Sometimes you wonder about all the things missed, never seeing children grow up, never seeing your parents grow old," Mohos said. "We think about that sometimes."