For a decade and a half, to the frustration of the American veterans' lobby, the MIAs had to stay missing as the US government negotiated with the Vietnamese for permission to return and find them. Complicating the situation was the fact that not all these men had disappeared in 'Nam itself. Some were lost in neighbouring Laos, where they were flying night missions to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh trail — the route used by the enemy to carry supplies from North to South Vietnam. So the US had another communist country to win round.
Today, the US military makes regular trips to these old battlefields to find their lost servicemen. Recently the 26-year-old British photographer Andy Sewell joined a team as they combed the hills and valleys of Laos, literally sifting the soil for bones, belongings and scraps of aircraft. These war detectives belong to an organisation based in Hawaii, cumbersomely known as the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (Jpac), and, Sewell says, they take a fierce pride in their work. "Some of them told me they'd served in Iraq, and that it was reassuring to know that if they'd died there, somebody would come looking for them."
At one site, the team were hunting for the remains of two flyers, Col Norman D Eaton and Lt Col Paul E Getchell, who had set off on a bombing mission from South Vietnam in a B-57B on January 13, 1969. "They found a handful of bone fragments," says Sewell. "They were bagged up for analysis at the lab back in Hawaii." At another site they unearthed what is most likely to be part of the zip-up flight suit of Lt John B Golz, who was 24 when his A-4C Skyhawk crashed on April 22, 1970. Its situation at the crash site suggests he did not eject before the plane came down — a precious detail to add to the story of a short life.
The Vietnam MIA toll is now closer to 1,800, but the acid soil of Southeast Asia is rapidly eating away at their bones. Jpac has an overall budget of about $50m a year, and Sewell says he felt "a little uneasy" watching such an expensive operation taking place in such a conspicuously poor country. But looking for MIAs is cheap compared with the $2m-a-day cost of the bombing campaign that brought these pilots to Laos in the first place.
THE LOST AIRMEN
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Col Norman D Eaton was 43 when his US Air Force B-57B aircraft was seen going down in flames over Laos, after flying from South Vietnam to drop bombs on the Ho Chi Minh trail in 1969. His navigator, Lt Col Paul E Getchell, was 32. During the 1970s, though no remains had been found, the two men's MIA status was changed to "died while missing".
THE LONE FLYER
On April 22, 1970, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) John B Golz of the US Naval Reserve flew an A-4C Skyhawk from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La, to bomb targets on the Ho Chi Minh trail. His plane was seen hitting the ground in Laos, and 24-year-old Golz was listed "killed in action/ body not recovered".
SCRAP METAL
The engine of a B-57B, thought to be the one piloted by Colonel Eaton, lies in an area of jungle cleared by the investigators.
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X MARKS THE SPOT
Details of MIA cases in Laos are meticulously mapped out at an American command centre in the country's capital, Vientiane.
WEAR AND TEAR
Specialist investigators examine a piece of a military flight suit, found during the excavation of a site where a US Navy A-4C Skyhawk plane crashed 34 years ago in southern Laos. This is believed to be the plane piloted by 24-year-old Lt John B Golz. These particular investigators are known as "life-support analysts" and specialise in identifying items such as flight suits and breathing apparatus. They have a well-thumbed reference manual to help them.
MADE IN THE USA
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In a village in southern Laos, a resourceful resident has made a fence out of the casings of old US cluster bombs. Between 1964 and 1973, the Americans dropped about 90m cluster bombs on Laos, much of which failed to explode at the time. People here say they wish the US would clear more of the unexploded ordnance, which has since killed and injured thousands of Laotians.
MISSION CONTROL
An aerial view of the temporary base camp in southern Laos from which the Americans direct their missions to find MIAs. When investigations here are complete, the camp will be inherited by the nearby village.