1st Lt. Dewey Stopa, USAF

Korean War · Ashley crew · Died in captivity · Remains never returned

Twelve returning prisoners reported seeing or hearing of him. He died in captivity in March 1953. His remains have never come home, and his identification card is in a display case in Pyongyang.

Identification card of 2nd Lt. Dewey Stopa on display in the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang — Stopa’s identification card, photographed on display in the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang, in late 1996. (PIP/Mark Sauter)

The man

Dewey Stopa was born July 16, 1925, and entered the service from Kansas City, Kan., according to the National Archives. He was the bombardier on Ashley’s crew. His case was placed in the record of a 2010 House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on POW/MIA accounting.

What is known

First Lieutenant Dewey Stopa joined the U.S. Air Force from Kansas and served with the 28th Bombardment Squadron, 19th Bombardment Group. He was the bombardier of a B-29 Superfortress, tail number 42-65357A, which left Kadena on the evening of 28 January 1953 in a flight of four to bomb the Kompo-Dong supply yard south of Pyongyang.

Shortly after releasing its bombs the aircraft was attacked by MiG-15s. Just after midnight the aircraft commander — Capt. Gilbert Ashley — made a distress call and ordered the crew out. The Superfortress caught fire and exploded near Hungsu-ri with five men believed still aboard. Nine were captured by the North Koreans. Three came home after the war. One died at the Pike’s Peak interrogation center. The remaining five became known as the “Ashley Five”; their story is told on the main case page.

Stopa is the man who died at Pike’s Peak.

What the returning prisoners described

Twelve former prisoners reported seeing or hearing about him. After the crash he evaded for three days before North Korean troops took him. They stripped his leather flying jacket and his boots, giving him “a thin pair of summer tennis shoes” in their place. In those he was marched north for two days and a night, then put in a cell with other Americans.

By then both his feet were frozen. At Pike’s Peak he was kicked and beaten by guards when he proved unable to stand. Another American gave him a pair of boots; they were pulled off him, making the injuries worse. He became delirious. His only medical treatment was an unidentified injection from a North Korean nurse. Despite everything his fellow prisoners could do, he died on 3 March 1953.

When Operation Glory returned remains, Stopa’s were not among them — unless they came back misidentified as someone else.

The status question, and what has changed

When PIP first published this account, the Pentagon’s main POW/MIA list did not record that Stopa had been captured at all. It carried him as killed in action — the category meant for men who die on the battlefield. Asked how that could be, the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office’s senior Korean War expert answered: “Why he is carried as KIA, I do not know either.”

That has since changed. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA)’s current published profile carries Stopa as unaccounted for and states in its own narrative that he was captured and that he was the crew member who died at the Pike’s Peak interrogation center. The record now says what the returning prisoners said in 1953.

What the museum holds

In late 1996 PIP’s founder visited the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang, where North Korea displays the identification cards and personal documents of Americans it has never accounted for. He photographed what was on show. Four of those men now have pages here. Pentagon researchers later visited the same museum and collected the same kind of information, adding to what the State Department already had. There is no public record that North Korea has ever provided any information on the fate of the men whose documents it puts on public display.

Stopa’s card is one of those documents — taken from a man North Korea captured, held, and let die of untreated injuries, and whose remains it has never returned.

What remains unresolved

His remains. Where he was buried, and whether anything of him came back through Operation Glory under another name.
The card. How it was taken, when, and what else was taken with it.
Accountability. Twelve men came home able to describe how he was treated. PIP has found no record that any action followed.

The men on the mountain

In 1953 five men from the same B-29 were held together in a mountain village in North Korea, where guerrillas who claimed to be friendly were secretly working for the North. The U.S. tried to rescue them by air and was ambushed. Three more men from the crew are also unaccounted for.

Their papers in a Pyongyang museum

In 1996 Mark Sauter photographed the identity documents of four missing Americans on display in North Korea’s Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang. North Korea displays the papers; it has not, to PIP’s knowledge, explained what became of the men who carried them.

Evidence and sources

Debriefings of twelve returning prisoners describing Stopa’s capture, march, treatment and death.
Photograph of Stopa’s identification card on display at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum, Pyongyang, taken by PIP’s founder in late 1996.
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency service-member profile, 1st Lt. Dewey Stopa — the B-29 loss, the Ashley 5, and his death at Pike’s Peak.
DPMO’s reply to PIP on his KIA listing: “Why he is carried as KIA, I do not know either.”
Primary account: PIP research files.

Request for information

Please contact us if you can help with any of the following.

Accounts of Stopa’s death at Pike’s Peak and his burial, from former guards, medical staff or prisoners.
The location of his grave.
How his identification card reached the Pyongyang museum.

Twelve returning prisoners described his death at Pike’s Peak in March 1953, and North Korea put his card on display. His remains never came back. Was he buried near Pike’s Peak and the grave lost? Were his remains returned in Operation Glory under another name? Or does North Korea know where he lies?

Write to contact@powinvestigativeproject.org. We treat every approach in confidence.