{"id":386,"date":"2009-08-02T07:47:13","date_gmt":"2009-08-02T11:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/02\/fighter-pilot-recovered-from-iraq-18-years-later\/"},"modified":"2009-11-21T21:30:40","modified_gmt":"2009-11-22T05:30:40","slug":"fighter-pilot-recovered-from-iraq-18-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/02\/fighter-pilot-recovered-from-iraq-18-years-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighter Pilot Recovered from Iraq 18 Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><font color=\"#ff0000\">Update<\/font><\/strong>: Speicher has previously been described by his family as &#8220;a true leader, a devout Christian and a role model.&#8221;\u00a0 He was a father to a then-3 and 1 year old,\u00a0and\u00a0also a Sunday School teacher at his Lake\u00a0Shore United Methodist church\u00a0in Jacksonville, FL.\u00a0 His widow subsequently married another fighter pilot and friend of Scott Speicher.\u00a0\u00a0Speicher has also been promoted twice since his shootdown, and is now a Captain (USN).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>US Navy Lt Cmdr Michael Scott &#8220;Spike&#8221; Speicher, an\u00a0F\/A-18 pilot,\u00a0was shot down over Iraq on 17 January 1991, during\u00a0Operation Desert Storm.<\/p>\n<p>Various <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/story\/0,2933,536170,00.html\">news outlets<\/a> have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2009\/US\/08\/02\/us.gulf.war.remains\/index.html\">covered<\/a> the US <a href=\"http:\/\/www.navy.mil\/search\/display.asp?story_id=47359\">military&#8217;s announcement<\/a> that Speicher&#8217;s remains have been recovered, following leads from local Iraqis.\u00a0 All indications are that he was buried near his aircraft crash location, leading to the conclusion that he was killed when he was shot down.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->After uncertainty over his status was raised, his condition was changed from Killed in Action to Missing-Captured.\u00a0 He was the only American unaccounted for in the conflict.\u00a0 The Iraqis inability, or unwillingness, to help account for Speicher&#8217;s status was even mentioned during the run-up to the 2003 invasion.\u00a0 For example, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/08\/03\/world\/middleeast\/03speicher.html\"><em>New York Times<\/em><\/a> indicates that while the crash location was known, there was no evidence of a pilot:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In December 1995, the United States, working through the International Committee of the Red Cross, was able to send a team to the crash site to investigate. They found no ejection seat and no signs of a body or bones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Update: Speicher has previously been described by his family as &#8220;a true leader, a devout Christian and a role model.&#8221;\u00a0 He was a father to a then-3 and 1 year old,\u00a0and\u00a0also a Sunday School teacher at his Lake\u00a0Shore United Methodist church\u00a0in Jacksonville, FL.\u00a0 His widow subsequently married another fighter pilot and friend of Scott Speicher.\u00a0\u00a0Speicher has also been promoted twice [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2,10],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fighter-pilot","tag-military","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}