“Why did it take the authorities three decades to renew its interest in the incident?”

The 1954 Geneva Accords partitioned Vietnam into two countries: the communist North and the western-aligned South. International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC) was established to oversee the implementation of the agreement.

On Oct. 18, 1965, an ICC Boeing 307 Stratoliner, designated F-BELV, was making its weekly flight from Saigon to Hanoi, stopping at Pnohm Penh, in Cambodia, and Vientiane, in Laos.

Twenty minutes after departing from the Laotian capital, the plane’s captain contacted the authorities at Hanoi to give his ETA. The aircraft never arrived. To this day, flight F-BELV is believed to be the only aircraft never to have been recovered from the Vietnam War.

But what really happened and why? Did the aircraft crash, or was it shot down? Did it happen over Laos or North Vietnam? Author Stephen Wynn seeks to unravel the riddle in his new book Mystery of Missing Flight F-BELV.

Set against the backdrop of America’s widening military involvement in the conflict in South East Asia, Wynn digs into the possible role of U.S. intelligence in the incident and examines if any of the ill-fated planes passengers were undercover agents.

Below, the author provides MHN readers preview of the case.

By Stephen Wynn

THE COMPLETION OF my book Mystery of Missing Flight F-BELV was a long time in the making. Forty-three years to be exact.

It began in 1976 when my late mother first told me about the death of her half-brother, James Sylvester Byrne. Already dead for 11 years by that point, he’d been serving as a Canadian soldier during the Vietnam War when he was killed. I was 18 at the time and found the story compelling.

I finally began researching my uncle’s death in the late 1990s by sending a letter to the Canadian government.

Many months later I received a letter from a Captain Solomon who confirmed that my uncle had in fact served in the Canadian Army and had officially being recorded as killed in action in Indo-China on Oct. 18, 1965. I was determined to find out how my uncle died.

Although not involved militarily in the Vietnam War, Canadian observers were part of the International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC), the intergovernmental authority that had been monitoring the border between North and South Vietnam since the 1954 conclusion of the conflict in Indo-China.

As my research continued into Jame’s death, I received a copy of a report from Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. It was dated Jan. 11, 1996, and was entitled A Report on Disappearance of the International Commission for Supervision and Control Aircraft over Indochina on October 18, 1965.

A copy of that report was also sent to the government of the United States embassy in Ottawa, Canada, who in turn passed it on to the Defence Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Office.

The aircraft mentioned in the report was F-BELV, a Boeing 307 Stratoliner, carrying members of the ICSC on a routine flight from Saigon to Hanoi, through both the Cambodian and Laotian capitals. The plane disappeared on the final leg of its journey: from Vientiane, Laos into North Vietnam. As member of the commission, my uncle, James Sylvester Byrne was aboard.

The tragedy soon became forgotten amid the larger story of the widening war in South East Asia.

I discovered that more than 30 years later, efforts inexplicably resumed to finally locate the crash-site. A fresh report was issued by Ottawa on Jan. 11, 1996 about the case. It was updated in January 2002 to include new details of the search.

The obvious question here is why did it take the Canadian authorities three decades to renew its interest in the incident?

After the new reports were issued, the Canadian Embassy in Thailand approached the Laotian Embassy for assistance along with the head of the resident United States Missing in Action team in Laos.

Help was forthcoming from the Laotian government who agreed to conduct a search of the area where wreckage of an aircraft was said to have been discovered. But Vientiane requested that Canada reimburse Laos for all costs incurred in the search. Additionally, no Canadian personnel would be allowed to be part of the search team.

The Laotian authorities carried out their search between Dec. 15 and 30, 1998. Although they found aircraft wreckage, it was determined that the debris was not part of missing flight F-BELV.

During this period, the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs also sought assistance from the Government of Vietnam, in relation to any information they might have on the matter.

It was first discussed in October 2000 in Hanoi, during a visit by the Canadian Director General of Consular Affairs with the Vietnamese authorities.

The Government of the United States was also approached on the matter.

It would be fair to say that Ottawa explored many different avenues in an attempt at discovering the truth of what happened, albeit more than 30 years after the events.

To this day, Flight F-BELV remains the only aircraft that was lost during the course of the Vietnam war that has never been recovered.

But can that be the case? Has someone actually found it and chosen to remain tight-lipped about what they know.

Even now, some 55 years later, taking responsibility for downing an unarmed aircraft carrying members of an international peace keeping mission would be an embarrassment for whichever nation was responsible for its loss.

There are two plausible explanations for the plane’s disappearance.

One is that BELV crashed into the side of the mountain. But with an experienced crew who had flown the route on numerous previous occasions, it seems doubtful. The weather on the day was fine, and the aircraft had been well maintained, which makes a mechanical failure unlikely.

That only leaves the possibility that it was shot down, either by another aircraft or by ground fire.

Besides the Vietnam War, there was a civil war underway inside Laos between forces of the Royal Laotian Government and guerrilla forces of the Pathet Lao. The latter of which controlled territory either immediately under, or near to, the approved air corridor which Flight F-BELV flew through.

It’s known that military aircraft of the British Royal Air Force, the United States Air Force, and from France in the form of Mission Militaire Francais, had aircraft in the area at the time. There were also commercial aircraft who used the area, such as Air America. It’s been claimed that these planes were covertly owned and operated by America’s Central Intelligence Agency, from 1950 to 1976, and who supported clandestine operations throughout Southeast Asia during the course of the Vietnam War.

No answers, just intrigue and uncertainty about what happened to missing flight F-BELV.

Stephen Wynn is the author of Mystery of Missing Flight F-BELV. A retired police officer having served with Essex Police as a constable for 30 years, he is married to Tanya and has two sons, Luke and Ross, and a daughter, Aimee. His sons served five tours of Afghanistan between 2008 and 2013 and both were injured. This led to the publication of his first book, Two Sons in a Warzone – Afghanistan: The True Story of a Father’s Conflict, published in October 2010. When not writing Stephen can be found walking his for German Shepherd dogs with his wife Tanya, at some unearthly time of the morning, when most normal people are still fast asleep.