| Date: 11 December 1965 |
| Aircraft type: C-123B Provider |
| Serial Number: 56-4376 |
| Military Unit: 4376 315 ACG |
| Service: USAF |
| Home Base: Tan Son Nhut |
| Name(s): |
| Maj Robert Milvoy Horsky (KIA) |
| Capt George Parker McKnight (KIA) |
| SSgt Mercedes Perez Salinas (KIA) |
| SSgt Donald David Stewart (KIA) |
| 81 ARVN troops (KIA) |
| The USAF was going through a bad patch for aircraft accidents in the second week in December but the worst was yet to come. A Provider took off from Pleiku in poor visibility for a flight to Tuy Hoa. The aircraft carried 81 ARVN paratroopers in addition to its flight crew of four. The flight should have taken less than an hour and no navigator was carried but the aircraft crashed into high ground that was shrouded in low cloud about 20 miles west of Tuy Hoa killing all on board. The aircraft apparently hit a tree on a mountain ridge as it was descending and then spun down a thousand feet in a flat spin. The wreckage was not found for two weeks and even then a ground party was unable to reach the site due to heavy Viet Cong resistance. This was the worst accidental air crash in terms of loss of life to take place during the war in Southeast Asia. However, on 4 April 1975, two years after the American withdrawal, a C-5A Galaxy crashed near Saigon as it was evacuating civilians and 155 people were killed, many of them orphaned children. Maj Horsky had previously flown B-52s with Strategic Air Command’s 70th Bomb Wing. The crew’s remains were repatriated from Vietnam in 1974 and formally identified in 1979 to be interred in a group burial in Arlington National Cemetery. |
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