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RF 101C Voodoo Vietnam MIA pilot flight suits and archive


matthew123
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I have two flight suits, with 15th TRS Cotton Pickers and Voodoo patches, and dress blues, of a pilot shot down on his 21st combat mission, along with his wingman, fairly early in the Vietnam War, while on photo recon over North Vietnam. The last contact with the pilots was a "He's on fire..." with no call sign. The archive contains all his Air Force paperwork... letter of acceptance to cadet training in 1952, pilot evaluations, RF101 training evaluations, yearly pilot flight hours, every year, from 1954 to 1966, photos of his 1950's Air Rescue (Labrador) and transport airframes, as well his supersonic RF101C (along with photos of damage caused in refueling incident in 1966, when both external fuel tanks were torn from the plane during nosedive/near crash, and incident report... see pics). He is credited with saving the Air Force a million dollars by not bailing out when told to... hand written 6 page incident report of his hitting a buoy while in air sea rescue in 1957, full hand written notebook while training in RF101s, i.d. card photos, official NVA photos of his crash site from 1966...see pics, (he was technically MIA until 1989, but not identified until 1998), all his certifications for all the aircraft he piloted (he made senior pilot in 1957), letters from various presidents on White House stationery to family.... he was pilot for Vice Commander. Probably a thousand pages from his Air Force career... plus all the MIA material, including a care package sent to Hanoi in 1968, but returned unopened.

 

As extensive of an archive of a pilot that could be imagined, not to mention his being shot down, and the years in MIA status, which generated post-KIA correspondence and paperwork. Quite a bit of newspaper and related material concerning his funeral once remains were identified.

 

 

 

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Yes... collating all the paper material is a bit daunting. Hope to organize it into cohesive whole.

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Nice. RF-101 stuff is hard to come by. Too bad about the circumstances. Was he with the 15 TRS when he was shot down? Most Voodoo sorties were from the 20 or 45 TRS by mid 1966. Was this from Page or Wright? Just wondering, as they both disappeared over NVN at the same time in 1966.

 

Randy

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  • 1 month later...
matthew123

The most poignant thing I have in the collection (aside perhaps from his last flight record on the day he went down, marked "incomplete") is the care package his wife sent to Hanoi in 1968, which was returned by the North Vietnamese...

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  • 4 weeks later...

Here is a photo of the POW care package returned from Hanoi in 1967... mailed through the Austrian Embassy, as there was no mail services to the North, and they never allowed a Red Cross visitation. The NVA considered pilots war criminals.

 

Not many of these floating around out there... perhaps none at all.

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firefighter

WoW!!!! I have never seen or heard of an un-opened POW package that was 'return to send', Vietnam or any war.Its hard to read the Customs Declaration, what did the send?

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Tobacco, candy, gum, cards, chess set... 3 1/2 lbs.

 

There are also the letters and various correspondence from the U.S. government, concerning the care package service to the N. Vietnam POW's.

 

Pretty rare... I am also a stamp collector, and have never heard of one before.

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