Major Forrest F. Parham

At the time of the Kinross Incident, Major Forrest Parham was the commander of the 438th Fighter Interceptor Squadron based at Kinross Air Force Base. He served on the Accident Investigation Board which investigated and provided the official USAF response to the Kinross missing F-89 incident.

He was born October 5, 1917 in Saskatchewan, Canada. He was raised in Minnesota. He served in the US Air Force during World War II and the Korean War. During the Second World Was, he served with the legendary Flying Tigers and achieved the title of "Ace". He received the  Distinguished Flying Coss with two oak leaf clusters, Air Medal with eight oak leaf clusters, Distinguished Unit Citation, Soldiers Medal, and two Bronze Service Stars. After serving at Kinross, he moved on to serve at Ladd Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska and at Colorado Springs.

After 28 years in the military, he retired (with a rank of Colonel) to Moreauville, Louisiana (by strange coincidence, Lt. Moncla's hometown), where he founded and operated Moreauville Flying Service, Inc., an agricultural aviation buisiness.

The last day I was in Moreauville, Louisiana in October, 2002, someone gave me his name and phone number and mentioned that he had served at Kinross AFB. At the time, I didn't realize that he had served on the Accident Investigation Board. When I got back to Vancouver I called him and talked to him for awhile about what he recalled about the incident and about his other experiences in the Air Force. We also talked a bit about UFOs, and he mentioned someone he knew in Alexandria, who knew something about the topic. With respect to the Kinross Incident, he said that the RCAF C-47 had not filed a flight plan or that the flight plan had not reached the GCI. He also reiterated that the C-47 had drifted south over the lake. Since I didn't know that he had been on the Accident Investigation Board, I thought that he was just giving me the second hand "official version" of events which everyone had heard at Kinross.

If he knew more than that, I certainly never suspected. He seemed to be fully forward with me about what he knew. It is possible that he was telling me all he was supposed to tell me. I think that he did mention to me that it had been a little hard for him being in Moreauville, where maybe some people thought that the Air Force was not telling the full story about Gene Moncla's disappearance.

Being that Moreauville, Louisiana is a small, close-knit town, it should not be too surprising that Forrest Parham was married into a family to which Gene Moncla was distantly related. Parham's wife, Eileen was a Coco, and one of Gene's cousins on his mother's side, was also married to a Coco.

It was a year or so after I talked to Forrest Parham, when I wrote to him asking for more information and asking if he had any phtographs of himself or Kinross Air Force Base. I was shocked and saddened to learn that he had passed away, December 11, 2002, little more than a month after I had talked to him on the telephone.