TUCKER, JAMES HALE
Name: James Hale Tucker
Rank/Branch: O2/US Air Force
Unit: 377th Combat Support Group, Tan Son Nhut AB, South Vietnam
Date of Birth: 29 December 1941
Home City of Record: Pawnee OK
Date of Loss: 26 April 1966
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 174000N 1062900E (XE591538)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 4
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: RF4C
Refno: 0317
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 in 1998.
Other Personnel In Incident: Warren L. Anderson (missing)
REMARKS: ALL CONTACT LOST
SYNOPSIS: 1Lt. James H. Tucker was the pilot of an RF4C Phantom jet flying
on an unarmed night reconnaissance flight over a heavily defended North
Vietnamese anti-aircraft complex when all contact with their aircraft was
lost. His backseater on the mission was Capt. Warren L. Anderson. It was
Anderson's third mission in Vietnam.
The mission was to photograph an anti-aircraft complex 15 miles north of
Dong Hoi, North Vietnam. The aircraft was being monitored by forward radar
units in South Vietnam. As the aircraft crossed a mountain range to
descended on the target, radio and radar contact was lost, and could not be
reestablished. An electronic search was begun immediately and a visual
search as soon as daylight permitted. Nothing was ever found of the aircraft
or its crew.
In 1973, 591 Americans were released from Vietnamese prisons; Anderson and
Tucker were not among them. They remained Missing In Action.
Following the war, as refugees began to flood the world from Vietnam,
thousands of reports of Americans still held captive began to accumulate. By
1988, over 6000 reports have been received by the U.S. Government. A
Pentagon panel, after a 5 month review of classified records concluded in
1986 that at least 100 Americans were still alive, held captive in Southeast
Asia.
Anderson was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for obtaining vital
photos on an unarmed craft over the area where he later disappeared. Because
there has never been any word of James Tucker or Warren Anderson, their
families wonder if they are alive or dead. And, if alive, how much longer
much they wait for their country to bring them home?
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