ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, December 20, 1995 TAG: 9512200053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
No remains of a U.S. Navy pilot whose plane crashed in Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War were found during a search of the site last week by American and Red Cross officials.
``Nothing they found would indicate he survived,'' Pentagon spokeswoman Beverly Baker said Tuesday.
The pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Michael Speicher, 33, of Jacksonville, Fla., was the first U.S. combat casualty in the Gulf War in which U.S.-led coalition forces expelled Iraq's army from Kuwait. The exact circumstances of his loss are unknown, although it was reported at the time that the plane exploded in the air.
The Navy said there was no communication from Speicher. A few months after the crash, the Pentagon classified him as killed in action, body unrecovered.
Speicher was the only American killed on Iraqi territory whose remains were not recovered.
With permission of the Iraqi government, a team of U.S. military specialists and officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross searched the site all last week. They left Friday without telling reporters what was found.
Baker said aircraft pieces and some related equipment found at the site west of Baghdad were recovered and sent to the Army Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii for scientific analysis. She said the material, which she did not further identify, might yield clues to circumstances of the crash.
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