| Date: 26 June 1968 |
| Aircraft type: O-2A Skymaster |
| Serial Number: 68-6879 |
| Military Unit: 20 TASS, 504 TASG |
| Service: USAF |
| Home Base: Da Nang |
| Name(s): |
| Maj Robert Francis Woods (KIA) |
| 1Lt Johnnie Clayton Cornelius (KIA) |
| An O-2 (call sign Covey) and its crew were lost during a FAC mission three miles north of the DMZ and nine miles east of the border with Laos. Maj Woods commenced a 45-degree dive to mark a target but the aircraft appeared to continue its dive until it hit the ground in a mountainous area. Neither of the crew was seen to escape and may have been wounded by ground fire. An immediate SAR effort proved negative. Investigations and surveys followed by several excavations of the crash site by joint US/Vietnamese teams took place between 1988 and 2007. Human remains and the ID tags of Maj Woods and 1 Lt Cornelius were handed over by local Vietnamese during the investigations. Two former NVA soldiers remembered the crash and that the crew’s bodies had been buried and showed the team the location where further human remains were recovered. In 2008 the remains were confirmed as being those of the O-2 crew by forensic evidence including mitochondrial DNA and dental analysis. |
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