| Date: 20 September 1965 |
| Aircraft type: F-104C Starfighter |
| Serial Number: 56-0883 |
| Military Unit: 436 TFS, 479 TFW attached to 6252 TFW |
| Service: USAF |
| Home Base: Da Nang |
| Name(s): |
| Capt Phillip Eldon Smith (POW) |
| Capt Smith was the pilot of one of several Starfighters flying a CAP mission in poor weather over the Gulf of Tonkin. Apparently his navigation system failed and although he came down below the cloud base to try to regain his bearings he became lost. He had flown too far to the east and was shot down by a pair of Chinese Navy Shenyang J-6s (MiG-19s) over the centre of Hainan island. Capt Smith was interrogated at Canton before being transferred to Peking for several years of solitary confinement.
Capt Smith was the only USAF pilot known to have been held captive by the Chinese and was finally released from China on 15 March 1973. Before his shoot down he had graduated from the Fighter Weapons Instructors School at Nellis AFB and was the Squadron and Wing Weapons Officer. During his tour at Da Nang he had flown 80 missions, 24 of them over North Vietnam. He resumed his Air Force career flying the F-4 with the 49th TFW and later commanded the USAF bases at Hellenikon, Greece and Bergstrom AFB, Texas. He retired from the USAF as a Colonel in July 1987. The Starfighter that Capt Smith was flying on 20 September was the first of 77 F-104Cs constructed by Lockheed and had made its maiden flight on 24 July 1958. |
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