‘Unsolved Histories’: Leave no one behind

The U.S. military promises that no wounded or killed service member will be left behind in the theater of war, and every reasonable effort will be made to bring home the remains of those who don’t survive. It’s a comforting promise made to family members of those who serve, and it’s a foundational pledge which dates back to the earliest days of the United States.

“It was coined during the Revolutionary War with the Ranger Battalion that was there at the time,” said Dr. Timothy McMahon of the Defense Department’s Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. “And it’s kind of transitioned into all of our military . . . that we leave no member behind.”

“And I think it goes more so because we’re a fully volunteer armed services,” Dr. McMahon continued. “We have young men and women who are taking the oath to stand watch and protect the citizens of the United States.”

“Knowing that your government is going to have your back at all times,” Dr. McMahon said, “is a very big key and essential part of our military service.”

The Defense Department spends millions of dollars every year searching battlefields and crash sites in former combat areas looking for remains of service members missing in action. When remains of loved ones are discovered and identified decades later, fulfillment of this promise is priceless to family members left behind.

“I knew his family would be happy to finally have him home”

When he was researching a wartime crash that had been lost for decades in the mountains of California, author and historian Peter Stekel actually came across remains of an aviator who had been missing for decades.

“It made me cry, I still get really, really torn up by the whole thing,” Stekel said. “It was humbling. It was amazing. It was wonderful, because I knew his family would be happy to finally have him home.”

However, for some reason, this promise- to leave no one behind – doesn’t apply to the male and female service members aboard Flight 293. It doesn’t apply to dozens of other flights carrying hundreds of American men and women who went missing while in service to their country.

One of those other flights disappeared in Alaska in 1952, and one of the 52 men on board who went missing was the grandfather of Tonja Anderson-Dell.

Missing, but not Missing in Action

“I was six or seven years old the first time I heard about it,” said Tonja Anderson-Dell. “Because I seen a picture of my grandfather, but hadn’t seen him around my grandmother’s house. And then when I got a little bit older, I became nosy and wanted to know what really happened to him and why no one’s ever found him.”

While she was still a teenager, Tonja set out to find answers about why her grandfather’s plane had disappeared, and why the U.S. military had given up trying to find it.

“My first letter I wrote to pretty much everybody – senators, the Navy, the Air Force, anyone I could think of that could help me,” Tonja said. “ The Air Force was like, ‘No, we’re not doing it, but how about you reach out to the Army?’ The Army said ‘Reach out to the Navy,’ the Navy said ‘Reach out to the Marines.’”

“So it’s pretty much everybody’s saying no, but just sending me in that circle,” Tonja said.

Fighting for recognition for “Operational Loss”

But Tonja Anderson-Dell didn’t give up. She became a crusader for the families of service members who disappeared in what she calls “operational losses” – crashes of aircraft traveling between bases or on training flights or otherwise lost in non-combat situations. These are aircraft that the military has given up on ever trying to find.

“I just felt that when they said they never, never leave our fallen behind, that he was part of that group,” Tonja said of her grandfather. “And to find out that they were not part of that group, I couldn’t wrap my head around, I couldn’t grasp.”

“Because when he raised his hand, he swore the same words that a gentleman who was missing in action had sworn,” Tonja said.

On Episode Seven of Unsolved Histories: What Happened to Flight 293?, we untangle the bureaucracy behind what many families feel is an empty promise to “Leave No One Behind.”