Two names were scratched into the wall of a Pyongyang jail cell. One was Sam Logan. The other was a Marine second lieutenant from Iowa who had gone down in a helicopter three weeks after Logan, and who has never been accounted for either.
What is known
2nd Lt. Thomas Odenbaugh, USMC, of Iowa, disappeared after his helicopter came down during a reconnaissance flight near Uijongbu on Sept. 29, 1950. DPAA identifies him as the pilot of the HO3S helicopter, from Marine Observation Squadron 6 (VMO-6), which was hit by ground fire; searchers recovered the observer’s body. Villagers told the search patrol that a survivor, “tall, blond, and wearing a brown flight suit,” was led away toward Uijongbu on the day of the crash. He was promoted after his capture.
The jail wall. On 16 November 1950, less than two months after Odenbaugh went missing, a U.S. official entered a Pyongyang jail the enemy had been using and found two messages scratched into the wall:
“Tom Odenbaugh, 2d Lt. USMC — Shot down 30 Sept. 6 October”
“Sam Logan, Capt. USAF — Shot down 9 September. 27 September.”
Two men, in the same cell, both of whom the United States would go on to list as missing rather than captured. Neither came home.
A notation nobody has explained. One memo requested that Odenbaugh be “carried as captured and be added to list presented to Communists for accountability.” Written beside it by hand: “P B M/L per DA.” What that instruction meant, and who gave it, is not known.
No returnee ever reported him. Among the prisoners who came home at the end of the war, none is recorded as having seen or heard of Thomas Odenbaugh.
What remains unresolved
- Who the survivor was, if the villagers were right. Villagers told the search patrol they saw one man led away alive. DPAA identifies Odenbaugh as the pilot and the recovered body as the observer’s.
- What the handwritten notation meant. “P B M/L per DA” sits beside a request to carry him as captured. It is the kind of marking that decides how a man is classified, and we have not found an explanation of it.
- Why a man whose name was found scratched in an enemy jail was not carried as captured. The wall is contemporaneous physical evidence, recorded by an American official at the time.
- Where he went. A friendly guard’s account, in PIP’s research, refers to a helicopter pilot taken to the Soviet Union. Whether that describes Odenbaugh, describes someone else, or is mistaken, is open. The book puts it as a question and so do we.
The helicopter the Soviets wanted
The guard’s account has a name attached to it. When Master Sgt. John Cain was repatriated in 1953 he told American intelligence about a guard who had served in the Chinese Nationalist Army and had no love for the Communists. Among what the man passed on: “He also told me of one (1) helicopter pilot with rank of Second Lieutenant being taken to Russia in March 1952.” Nothing in the record indicates the Pentagon followed the report up.
PIP did. The helicopter incident the guard appears to have been describing is one in which the pilot came home at the end of the war. Looking for a missing second lieutenant connected to a helicopter, the closest match we have found is Thomas Odenbaugh. That is a match by rank, service and circumstance. It is not an identification, and we do not present it as one.
Two things make the question worth pressing. The first is that Moscow wanted the machine. (The Russian account below most likely describes the February 1952 capture of a Navy helicopter whose pilot came home; it shows Soviet interest, not Odenbaugh’s fate.) A Russian member of the US–Russia Joint Commission described one capture to American officials: “We lured in this helicopter. When he started descending, he received AAA fire so he was forced to land. There was a crew of two people. They were given to the Koreans. Both their personnel and our people were there. The helicopter was taken apart, put in containers and taken to Moscow.” Three Soviet institutes studied it. “This was something Moscow was extremely interested in at the time,” another Russian commissioner said. “You have to guess that his helicopter helped our military-industrial complex in producing our own Soviet helicopter.”
The second is that they wanted the men who flew it. In April 1951 Chinese officers issued Top Secret instructions about the “type of plane known as a ‘helicopter.’” Troops were to stay concealed as one came in and attack as the passengers stepped out. “Capture of these men will secure a valuable prize as they are mostly intelligence personnel and officers, and valuable information may be obtained from them.”
Odenbaugh went down in a helicopter in September 1950, on a reconnaissance flight, and was never reported by a returning prisoner. Whether he is the second lieutenant the guard described, we do not know. We would like to.
Why the case matters
Odenbaugh and Logan are the clearest surviving instance of two missing Americans placed in the same enemy cell by physical evidence rather than by testimony. Whatever happened to one very likely bears on the other, and the two cases have almost always been worked separately.
He also fits the pattern the project keeps meeting: a man with useful technical knowledge, taken early, never reported by returning prisoners, and never carried as a prisoner of war by his own government.
Evidence and sources
- PIP research files — the jail wall, the crewman listing, the promotion after capture, the “carried as captured” memo and the handwritten notation.
- The contemporaneous report of the Pyongyang jail inspection of 16 November 1950.
- Master Sgt. John Cain’s post-repatriation report of a guard’s account of a second lieutenant helicopter pilot taken to Russia in March 1952.
- US–Russia Joint Commission interviews describing the luring down, dismantling and shipment to Moscow of an American helicopter, and its study by three Soviet institutes.
- Chinese Top Secret instructions of April 1951 on ambushing helicopter crews.
- Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency service member profile, 2nd Lt. Thomas Donald Odenbaugh — aircraft, role as pilot and the villagers’ account of a survivor.
Request for information
Please contact us if you can help with any of the following.
- Accounts of a Marine helicopter pilot held in 1950 or later, from former North Korean, Chinese or Soviet personnel or fellow prisoners.
- The identity of the helicopter pilot, a second lieutenant, reported taken to Russia in March 1952.
- What happened to the prisoners held in the Pyongyang jail when the city fell in October 1950.
Villagers told searchers they saw a survivor led away, and Odenbaugh scratched his name into a Pyongyang cell wall beside Sam Logan’s. No returning prisoner ever reported him. Was he killed as the North Koreans retreated? Or was he sent to the Soviet Union, which wanted captured helicopters and the men who flew them?
Write to contact@powinvestigativeproject.org. We treat every approach in confidence.