

Some of the photos from Dover AFB released to The Memory Hole included images of the coffins of the Columbia astronauts arriving at the base in February 2003. The Department of Defense did not differentiate these photos from those of soldiers' coffins. Nicole comments in the previous post:
I wish I could find a better source for which coffin photos are the Columbia ones. I'd be interested to know if there are any that ran on covers, now that we know which papers ran the photos.NASA says the first 18 rows of this gallery (if The Memory Hole is still blasted by high traffic, there's a mirror site here) are Columbia images. None of the newspapers I linked ran any of those photos on A1. The WaPo, however, ran one on an inside page.
>DOD Misidentifies Photos of Columbia Crew Remains Arriving at Dover AFB as Being Iraq War Dead [SpaceRef.com]
>Dover AFB gallery [The Memory Hole]
>Dover AFB gallery mirror site [Warblogging.com, via Elisabeth Donovan]
As I understand it, the photos showing the cargo plane with the high wing, the photos showing a hearse, and the photos with an honor guard clad in blue uniforms are all of the Columbia astronauts' remains returning to Dover AFB.
The Iraq/Afghanistan remains arrived in cargo planes that look similar to a civilian DC-10, with a mid-fuselage wing, the honor guard is wearing green battle dress, and the caskets are being loaded into trucks.
Posted by: Vidiot at April 25, 2004 5:32 PM