Dem
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GOP
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Today's account is from L.A.B. in Chesterton, IN:
Captain William Stroven was the pilot, and Captain Kenneth Stonebraker the navigator/recon officer aboard an Air Force RF-4C Phantom II jet assigned a photo-reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam on October 28, 1968. The aircraft departed its base at Udorn Airfield, Thailand, for its target, which included an ammunition supply dump near Hanoi.
As the aircraft was over Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam, it was lost from radar—Stroven and Stonebraker were declared Missing in Action (MIA) when they failed to return to base. The public record reveals very little more about their fates.
In the 1990s, American survey teams in Vietnam believed they found the wreckage of their aircraft, but it was later determined from close inspection of crash debris details that was not the case.
The Air Force kept promoting the airmen while classed as MIA, with both achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before finally moving from MIA status to KIA (killed in action) in 1975.
Kenny chose to leave a post in Strategic Air Command to go to tactical photo-recon in Vietnam. He left behind a wife and two young children, mother, father, brother, sister, aunts, uncles and cousins.
Kenny, thank you for your sacrifice.
Thanks, L.A.B. (Z)