Air Force Pilot, lost over Vietnam, identified
Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Donald Downing was flying a reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam September 5, 1967, when his wingman described a “large, bright fireball” after which Downing’s plane went silent.
U.S. Air Force Captain Donald W. Downing was assigned to the 557th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 12th Tactical Fighter Wing, 7th Air Force in September 1967, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA – ed.) said in a news release.
Downing did not respond to radio calls to his F-4C Phantom II. And though search and rescue efforts started at daylight, electronic and visual searches of the area found nothing.
More than a decade later, on April 28, 1978, Downing was reported as killed in action. He was later posthumously promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel, the DPAA said. His name was recorded on the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. and the American Battle Monuments Commission’s Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, along with the names of other unaccounted-for soldiers from the Vietnam War.
Finally, in the spring of 2024, a recovery team found life support equipment, possible material evidence, aircraft wreckage, unexploded ordnance and possible osseous materials — bones — at a site in Quang Binh Province, Vietnam.
Downing was survived by his wife and four children, as well as his parents and four siblings, according to a news clipping published after his disappearance. The news clipping said that Downing had been reported missing in action just a few days before the couple’s seventh wedding anniversary. CBS News
LTC Downing will be buried at Arlington at an unspecified future date. Air Force Times
H/t to Jeff LPH on this one.
Category: Air Force, Vietnam, We Remember