DNA testing seeks to ID Vietnam veteran remains

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A Missouri gravesite honoring an American crew whose plane crashed during the Vietnam War is being unearthed in an effort to identify the remains buried beneath the single tombstone.

Work began Tuesday to open the gravesite at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery near St. Louis. The site has held the remains of some but not all of the 10-man crew for more than four decades.

The crew's plane went down over a mountain jungle in Laos on Feb. 5, 1969. It took three months for search crews to find scattered skeletal remains.

DNA testing will be done to determine whose remains were buried at the Missouri cemetery, and whose were left behind.

The Air Force says each crewman who is identified will be given his own burial site.