ROSS, JOSEPH SHAW

Name: Joseph Shaw Ross
Rank/Branch: Captain USAF
Unit: 389th Tactical Fighter Squadron Da Nang Air Base, South Vietnam
Date of Birth: 26 January 1943
Home City of Record: Ft. Thomas KY
Loss Date: 01 August 1968
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 172235N 1061310E
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 3
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: F4D
Other Personnel In Incident: William J. Thompson (missing)

Remarks:

Source: Compiled from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S.
Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published
sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK.


SYNOPSIS: Capt. Joseph Ross and Col. William Thompson comprised the
crew of the lead aircraft in a flight of two F4-Ds which departed Da
Nang Air Base, Republic of Vietnam on August l, 1968, on a night armed
reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam. Enroute, the flight was
diverted to look for truck traffic in the vicinity of their original
target. Locating the traffic, Thompson, the plane's pilot, dropped
several sets of flares and illuminated a group of trucks. He told his
wingman to circle the area while he made a bombing pass on the trucks.
As the wingman circled, he noted a large explosion within several
hundred feet of the target area, and immediately attempted to contact
Thompson, but with no success. The explosion occurred about 3:10 a.m.
The wingman saw no parachutes and heard no beepers.

About daybreak, search planes heard an emergency electronic signal
which seemed to come from the area where Ross and Thompson were lost.
Searchers were unable to get any response to calls over the emergency
frequency, and terminated the search around noon. Flare chutes were
found near the truck target, but no wreckage of the F4 was found.

The area in which Capt. Ross and Col. Thompson went down is very near
the Ban Karai Pass on the Laos/Vietnam border. It is mountainous with
peaks ranging from 3500-4000 feet and deep valleys dense with multiple
canopy jungle. One searcher described the mountains "of sharp pointed
grey rock karsts in great frequency closely jammed up like the stalac-
tites of a sound suppression chamber".

Thompson and Ross were lost in harsh, largely unpopulated terrain, and
without access to the area, it cannot be known with any certainty what
happened to them. There have been thousands of reports, however, of
Americans who remain in captivity years after the war's end. Two of
them could be Thompson and Ross. Their families will not know until
those live prisoners are brought home.

---------------

Senate Select Committee Final Report

Joseph S. Ross
(1243)

On August 1, 1968, Major Thompson and First Lieutenant Ross were
the crew of an F-4D, one in a flight of two aircraft from Da Nang
Air Base, South Vietnam. Their wingman observed the flight leader
drop flares which illuminated a group of trucks on the ground and
Major Thompson rolled in on the target. The wingman next observed
an explosion on the ground within 100 feet of the target and it was
evident that Major Thompson's aircraft had impacted and exploded in
an area approximately 47 kilometers southwest of the coastal city
of Dong Hoi and 1500 meters northeast of the village of Ban Katoi.
There were no chutes or beepers noted in the ten minutes the
wingman orbited the burning wreckage. Both crewmen were declared
missing in action.

On March 30, 1973, a returning U.S. POW reported he saw the name
"Ross" written on a wall at the "Heartbreak" POW camp in Hanoi. In
1978, a U.S. Air Force compendium of names providing by returning
U.S. POWs correlated the name "Ross" to First Lieutenant Joseph S.
Ross. However, the source of the names and its meaning was never
determined, no returning U.S. POWs had any knowledge of the fate of
the two crewmen, and they were never reported alive in the northern
Vietnamese prison system. After Operation Homecoming, both airmen
were declared dead/body not recovered, based on a presumptive
finding of death.

In January 1992, the Defense Department provided a preliminary
analysis of Vietnamese list of combat air defense operations in
Quang Binh Province. Included in the list was a reference to the
shoot down on August 1, 1968, of an F-4 aircraft.


Note: EGRESS reports "B190, Y008, Z009, all said name was seen on a wall at
Heartbreak 09/20/72.

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