US refuses to add sailors' names to Vietnam Memorial

ALBANY - The Associated Press

The Pentagon has refused a long-standing request to add the names of 74 U.S. 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 was cut in half by an Australian aircraft carrier. The destroyer's stern section stayed afloat while the bow section sank.
     
Survivors and relatives of those killed have been pushing the Department of Defense to add the 74 names to the wall because the ship had supported ground operations in Vietnam just weeks earlier.
     
But Pentagon officials this month maintained that the accident occurred outside the Vietnam combat zone.