Sailors search for Sailors in Southeast Asia. (People Planes Places).

On January morning in 1968, a Navy commander, three lieutenants (junior grade), four petty officers second class and a petty officer third class climbed aboard their OP-2E Neptune and prepared for takeoff. They would not live to see sunset that day.

The nine Sailors were members of Observation Squadron 67, a unit that operated secretly from an air base in Thailand during the Vietnam War. Their mission was to pepper the jungles of Laos with tiny sensors that could be used to collect intelligence by detecting slight movements or listening in on conversations.

That morning, three planes left the airstrip in Thailand, but only two returned. The cryptic last words of the third aircraft's mission commander were, "I'm going down through this hole in the clouds."

All that is known is that their plane crashed on the side of a cloud-covered mountain in Laos, nearly a mile above the jungle floor, and for more than 30 years the site remained untouched.

The mountain was deemed too dangerous to excavate in 1996 when an investigation team located the crash site, but with help from Army mountaineers it was decided that it could be done. In 2001, the crash site was excavated for the first time; the remains were repatriated and are in the identification process. Now, as part of a Joint Task Force-Full Accounting initiative, another search is in progress.

Strapped in and nearly dangling at times from the side of the mountain, only 100 feet from the summit, workers systematically search through grids on a 35-degree mud- and rock-filled slope. This time around it's fresh dirt, undisturbed remains, new pieces of the puzzle and hopefully closure for families who have waited for more than three decades.