The Defense Department has identified remains found in a search conducted in 2000 and 2005 of a crash site in Vietnam as those of Col. Eugene D. Hamilton of Opelika, Ala. Hamilton was flying an F-105D on an armed reconnaissance mission under Operation Rolling Thunder when enemy fire struck his fighter. Airborne searches of the area at the time found no trace of the fighter or the pilot, but Hanoi radio broadcast that it had shot down an F-105.
A three-month continuing resolution that ended in December inflicted less pain on the Department of the Air Force than it had expected, as procurement and construction continue in the new year. The federal government operated under a stopgap spending measure that stretched from the beginning of the fiscal year on…