ROBERT FRANKLIN COADY
.
.
MAJ - Air Force - Regular
Rank/Branch: USAF, O3
34 year old Married, Caucasian,
Male
Born on Sep 11, 1939
From NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA
His tour of duty began on Jan
18, 1969
Casualty was on Jul 26, 1974
in LAOS
Loss Coordinates: 163600N 1061500E
Status (in 1973) Hostile, died
while missing
FIXED WING - PILOT
AIR LOSS, CRASH ON LAND
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: A1H
Body was not recovered
Category: 2
Religion
EPISCOPAL, ANGLICAN
Panel 34W - - Line 31
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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