| Date: 3 April 1966 |
| Aircraft type: F-8C Crusader |
| Serial Number: 146919 |
| Military Unit: VF-24 |
| Service: USN |
| Home Base: USS Hancock |
| Name(s): |
| Lt Richard Lee Laws (KIA) |
| During an air strike on a POL site at Bai Thuong, 20 miles northwest of Thanh Hoa, one of the Crusaders tasked with defence suppression was hit by AAA as it pulled up from its bombing run. Lt Laws reported that the aircraft (call sign Page Boy 450) had been hit and that he had a fire warning light in the cockpit. Twenty seconds later the flight leader saw the Crusader hit the side of a hill and explode. There was no sign of a parachute. Between 1994 and 2006 several joint US/Vietnamese investigations and excavations were carried out in the area in which the aircraft had crashed with the result that remains were found that were matched to Lt Laws’s mother through mitochondrial DNA testing. His remains were buried in Annapolis on 10 May 2013. |
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