COADY, ROBERT F.

Name: Robert F. Coady
Rank/Branch: USAF, O3
Unit:
Date of Birth: 11 September 39
Home City of Record: New Orleans, LA
Date of Loss: 18 January 69
Country of Loss: Laos
Loss Coordinates: 163600N 1061500E
Status (in 1973): Missing
Category: 2
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: A1H

Other Personnel In Incident:

Source: Compiled by THE P.O.W. NETWORK 02 February 93 from the
following published sources - POW/MIA's -- Report of the Select Committee
on POW/MIA Affairs United States Senate -- January 13, 1993. "The Senate
Select Committee staff has prepared case summaries for the priority cases
that the Administration is now investigating. These provide the facts about
each case, describe the circumstances under which the individual was lost,
and detail the information learned since the date of loss. Information in
the case summaries is limited to information from casualty files, does not
include any judgments by Committee staff, and attempts to relate essential
facts. The Committee acknowledges that POW/MIAs' primary next-of- kin know
their family members' cases in more comprehensive detail than summarized
here and recognizes the limitations that the report format imposes on these
summaries."

Mid-morning on January 18, 1967, Captain Coady was the pilot of an
A-1H, the number two aircraft in a flight of four on a combat
support mission approximately five miles south-southeast of
Tchepone, Savannakhet Province. His aircraft made a shallow dive
on a target, was hit by hostile fire during the dive, and crashed
with wings level into a wooded hillside within ten meters of the
source of the ground fire, exploding on impact. He was not
observed to parachute from the aircraft and no beeper was heard.
A SAR effort located no evidence of him.

In 1971, Captain Coady's sister viewed a film depicting U.S. POWs
in North Vietnam during Christmas 1969. She also believed she'd
seen his picture in a photo album the U.S. Navy had provided her.
DIA has determined that all those in the 1969 film have been
positively identified and Captain Coady is not in either the film
or photos prepared of individuals depicted in the movie.

Upon his early release from prison in 1969, one U.S. POW reported
having heard of a POW named either Bill Cody or Cote but never saw
an individual with that name and could provide no other information
about the individual. In 1978 the U.S. Air Force correlated this
to Robert T. Coady but there is no basis for such a correlation and
no other returnee from North Vietnam ever provided such a name. In
July 1974 he was declared dead/body not recovered, based on a
presumptive finding of death.

In July 1992 Captain Coady's crash site was investigated by a joint
U.S./Vietnamese team and the team interviewed witnesses concerning
the circumstances of the crash. One source described having
recovered Coady's dog tag and other personal artifacts in 1990
while scavenging for metal at the crash site. During July 1992
personal artifacts and surface wreckage recovered permitted a
tentative correlation of the site to Captain Coady's aircraft crash
site. The recovered material also suggested Captain Coady did not
exit his aircraft before it crashed.

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