US refuses to add sailors’ names to Vietnam Memorial because they were ‘outside the Vietnam combat zone’ when their ship sank during a training exercise

•  74 US Sailors died in a 1969 ship collision between the USS Frank E. Evans and an Australian aircraft during the Vietnam War
• Survivors and relatives of those killed have been pushing the Department of Defense to add the 74 names to the Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C 
• The ship had supported ground operations in Vietnam just weeks earlier
• Pentagon officials said that the Evans victims are precluded from being added to the wall because the accident occurred outside the Vietnam combat zone
• ‘I’m not happy with the whole thing,’ 92-year-old WWII and Vietnam veteran Navy Master Chief Lawrence Reilly Sr said from his Syracuse home

The Pentagon has refused a long-standing request to add the names of 74 US sailors who died in a 1969 ship collision to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The USS Frank E. Evans was participating in a nighttime training exercise in the South China Sea when it turned into the path of an Australian aircraft carrier and was split in half. The World War II-era destroyer’s stern section stayed afloat while the bow section sank.

Survivors and relatives of those killed have been pushing the Department of Defense for years to add the 74 names to the wall because the ship had supported ground operations in Vietnam just weeks earlier and likely would’ve been sent back to the war zone after the exercise.

But Pentagon officials in a decision this month stuck to their position that the Evans victims are precluded from being added to the wall because the accident occurred outside the Vietnam combat zone.