Name: CW2 Howard Brisbane Comer, Jr.
Status: Remains were returned on 03/16/01 from an incident on 11/24/1969 while performing the duty of Pilot.
Age at death: 24.5
Date of Birth: 06/04/1945
Home City: Jacksonville, FL
Service: AV branch of the reserve component of the U.S. Army.
Unit: 187 AHC, 269 CAB
Major organization: 1st Aviation Brigade
Flight class: 68-515/68-23
Service: AV branch of the U.S. Army.
The Wall location: 16W-115
Short Summary: Crashed in the Van Co Dung River near Tay Ninh. Passengers & aircraft were recovered. Flight class roommate was Weiss.
Aircraft: UH-1H tail number 68-15564
Service number: W3161848
Country: South Vietnam
MOS: 100B = Utility/Observation Helicopter Pilot
Primary cause: SVN-BNR
Major attributing cause: aircraft connected not at sea
Compliment cause: weapons
Vehicle involved: helicopter
Position in vehicle: pilot
"Official" listing: helicopter air casualty - pilot
Length of service: 04
Location: Tay Ninh Province III Corps.
Additional information about this casualty:
The Florida Times-Union
Monday, May 28, 2001
Nearly 32 years after a helicopter crash in
Vietnam, Jacksonville man can finally be put to
rest Peace at last for a family DNA helps solve
MIA case Lindsay Tozer, Times-Union staff writer
Howard Comer was young, a gung-ho patriot bent on
the idea of making the world a better place by
doing his part to fell communism in Vietnam.
For more than 30 years, this was the picture Wanda
Babb painted for her son Brian when trying to
explain the father he never knew.
Brian Comer was only 4 months old that late fall
day in 1969 when his father's helicopter crashed
in South Vietnam during a routine mission.
Three men were rescued. Two crew members were
killed instantly.
The sixth man, Howard Brisbane Comer Jr. of
Jacksonville, was nowhere.
The Robert E. Lee High School graduate would
remain unaccounted for until this spring, when
military scientists used DNA and other techniques
to identify his skeletal remains.
His younger brother, Preston Comer, said it was
still difficult to believe.
"It's come up several times," the Jacksonville man
said.
"But when they said, 'Where do you want him
buried?' not 'We think we have something' or 'We
might have something,' " the family accepted the
findings.
The chief warrant officer, Babb said, will be
buried in Arlington National Cemetery on July 2 as
one more of Jacksonville's missing in action can
be laid to rest. Still, more than 100 remain,
including five from Vietnam.
Today, Comer will be remembered along with more
than 1,500 Jacksonville men and women and the
thousands of others who died in service to the
country. A Memorial Day observance is scheduled
for 6 p.m. at the Duval County Veterans Memorial
Wall.
Although Babb doesn't subscribe to the philosophy
of closure, the Lake Charles, La., woman said there
is a measure of relief found in the finality of
identification.
"At least I know he's back here and will be honored
like he should be and will rest in peace," she
said.
It has been a long 32 years, said Babb, who
remarried in 1986 and was widowed again in 1999.
She dealt with the routine calls and letters
keeping her abreast of the fact that no new
information was known.
She struggled with the promises each new
presidential administration would dangle before
her.
She coped when a Vietnamese woman claimed to have
Comer's remains which she would return for U.S.
citizenship. Babb said no.
But mostly, she wrestled with what might have
been.
"I think about him daily, every time I look at my
oldest son," she said.
"What my life would have been like, where we would
have lived, what kind of father he would have
been."
On Nov. 27, 1969, four days after the helicopter
went down, Babb answered her door to find three
men, all Army, one a chaplain.
The 24-year-old pilot was missing, they explained
gently.
Babb, 20, was left alone with a baby and a host of
unanswerable questions.
"I'd see pictures of the infantry in there and I
thought, 'Why can't they find him? Why can't they
just go in and find him,' " she said of her
husband of two years.
Although the family was stunned into a "quiet
shock" at the news Comer was missing, Rita Comer
said her brother had a feeling he would be killed
during the war.
His farewell still rings in her ears.
"When he and Wanda came to visit me and my husband
in Lake City, he said he felt like something was
going to happen and that he wouldn't be back,"
said Comer, who now lives in Jacksonville. "He
said, 'I just want to tell you I love you and that
I'm not going to worry about it.' He put it in
God's hands."
News accounts of released prisoners kept Babb's
hope buoyed that her husband would come home.
"I was hoping he would see his son," she said, her
voice trailing off. "He never did see his son."
By the early '90s, three different investigation
teams had tackled the case of a fatal crash in the
Van Co Dung River that happened as fighting in
Vietnam reached its most ferocious stage, said
Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Pentagon's
POW/MIA office.
Reports surfaced and villagers came forward about
the skeletal remains in relatives' attics.
Scores of interviews were done and Comer's
military identification card was produced. Plates
from a U.S. chopper were offered up and slivers of
bone were handed over.
Around Christmas 1993, remains later identified as
Comer's were sent to an identification lab in
Hawaii. It would take eight years of testing and
retesting, including a dozen DNA samplings using
blood drawn from Comer's mother to ensure the
set's completeness, Greer said.
Although using DNA since 1994 and scientists
becoming more savvy with the procedure with each
passing year, "it doesn't make the DNA testing on
the lab table go any faster," he said.
On any given day, Greer said, about 500 people
worldwide are working to locate and identify
missing service members.
As of last month, about 600 missing servicemen
from Vietnam had been identified. Another 1,981
remain unaccounted for, he said, adding that
hundreds of sets of remains are in some stage of
the identification process.
And that makes for 1,981 families who can't let go.
But for the Comers, Rita Comer said, the news of
identification wasn't needed to mae peace with the
fate of the missing pilot.
"My mother is a Christian and after so many years
you put closure on it because you know he's in the
Lord's hands," she said. "His remains are not
important, it is his spirit that makes him who he
is."
Web site(s) refering to this casualty:
http://rickelodeon.com/flpowmia/comer.html
Reason: aircraft lost or crashed
Casualty type: Non-hostile - died of other causes
married male U.S. citizen
Race: Caucasian
Religion: Episcopal (Anglican)
Burial information: ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY, VA (IMO)
The following information secondary, but may help in explaining this incident.
Category of casualty as defined by the Army: non-battle dead Category of personnel: active duty Army Military class: warrant officer
This record was last updated on 07/13/2006
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Date posted on this site: 10/25/2024
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