| Date: 7 October 1967 |
| Aircraft type: A-4E Skyhawk |
| Serial Number: 152086 |
| Military Unit: VA-164 |
| Service: USN |
| Home Base: USS Oriskany |
| Name(s): |
| Lt David Lawton Hodges (KIA) |
| An Iron Hand flight of A-4s was searching for a Fan Song radar site that was known to be active south of Hanoi in association with an SA-2 battery. When the flight was at 11,000 feet about 15 miles south of the city, one of the pilots spotted two SAMs heading towards the aircraft. He called to Lt Hodges who was slow to respond and probably did not have the missiles in sight. The first missile passed safely behind the flight in a ballistic trajectory but the second SA-2 guided towards Lt Hodges’s aircraft (call sign Magic Stone 413) and exploded. The Skyhawk burst into flames, rolled to the right and dived into a karst ridge near Hoang Xa. No ejection was seen and it was assumed that Lt Hodges might have been incapacitated by the blast from the SAM. In 1995 and 1996 joint US-Vietnamese excavation teams recovered the remains of Lt Hodges from the crash site. |
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