(Image: Laos GPS Map, reproduced with permission)
This rusting F-4 Phantom wingtip, mounted in the small southern Laos village of Ban Phanop, cuts a poignant reminder of heroism and sacrifice during the Vietnam War.
Still displaying a faded American flag, the twisted part belonged to an F-4C fighter jet, call sign Boxer 22, which took off from Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam on December 5, 1969 to attack enemy targets along the Ho Chi Minh trail.
But the two-man crew was forced to eject when their aircraft, serial number 63-7444, was hit by ground fire on that ill-fated final mission.
Both men landed safely on different sides of the river but were unable to reach each other. What followed was one of the largest airborne search and rescue efforts in history, involving over 300 sorties.
(Image: Google Earth; Cam Ranh Bay air base is now an international airport)
After spending three days in the jungle, navigator 1st Lt Woodrow J. Bergeron was airlifted to safety. But the Phantom’s 26-year-old pilot, Captain Benjamin Franklin Danielson, was declared MIA presumed dead. It would be decades before his remains were identified and returned to his family’s home in Kenyon, Minnesota.
The effort to recover Captain Danielson and 1st Lt Bergeron also cost the life of Airman 1st Class David Davison, whose Sikorsky HH-53 Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopter, serial number 68-8283, withstood ground fire before limping back to base.
(Image: Laos GPS Map, reproduced with permission)
The wingtip of Boxer 22 was salvaged from the crash site nearby, and represents just one among hundreds of downed planes whose wrecked remains haunt the now-peaceful jungles of Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. Find out more about Captain Danielson’s poignant return to the US here.
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