| Date: 26 April 1972 |
| Aircraft type: C-130E Hercules |
| Serial Number: 64-0508 |
| Military Unit: Detachment 1, 374 TAW |
| Service: USAF |
| Home Base: Tan Son Nhut |
| Name(s): |
| Maj Harry Arlo Amesbury (KIA) |
| 1Lt Kurt Frederick Weisman (KIA) |
| 1Lt Richard Lee Russell (KIA) |
| TSgt Donald Russell Hoskins (KIA) |
| SSgt Calvin Coolidge Cooke (KIA) |
| SSgt Richard Edward Dunn (KIA) |
| The airdrops to the beleaguered forces at An Loc continued at night as it had become too dangerous to attempt the low-level drops in daylight. Night-time CDS drops had been reinstated after poor results using the GRADS system of radar-directed airdrops. On the night of the 25th a C-130 (call sign Spare 81) attempting to drop at An Loc was shot down. The aircraft approached the drop zone at 500 feet and 170 knots when it was hit by ground fire and crashed shortly afterwards about five miles south of An Loc. All on board were killed. Two other Hercules had already been hit by ground fire during the night’s operation and when Maj Amesbury’s aircraft was lost the airdrop was brought to a halt for the night. The aircraft was from the 345th TAS from Ching Chuan Kang AB on Taiwan. This same crew had airdropped supplies to ARVN forces on the 24th at Kompong Trach in Cambodia and their aircraft had been hit by ground fire no less than 86 times on that mission.
In February 1975 South Vietnamese forces located and returned the remains of 1Lt Weisman but the bodies of the other crewmembers remained missing at that time. Between 1988 and 1991 human remains that had been found by local villagers near An Loc were repatriated by the Vietnamese government. These remains, along with those subsequently recovered by joint US/Vietnmamese excavations, were later identified as being those of Maj Amesbury, TSgt Hoskins and SSgt Cooke. The remains of SSgt Cooke were buried in Arlington National Cemetery on 20 June 2006 while the remains of TSgt Hoskins were buried in the Indiana Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Madison. |
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