RITTICHIER, JACK C.
Name: Jack C. Rittichier
Branch/Rank: US Coast Guard/O3
Unit: CG 37 ARRS
Date of Birth: 17 August 1933
Home City of Record: BARBERTON OH
Date of Loss: 09 June 1968
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 162144 North 1070534 East
Status (in 1973): Killed In Action/Body Not Recovered
Category: 3
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: HU3E #6714710
Missions:
Other Personnel in Incident: Elmer Holden, James Locker, Richard Yeend,
all KIA/BNR
Refno: 1206
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw
data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA
families, published sources, interviews and CACCF = Combined Action
Combat Casualty File.
REMARKS:
R/R CONTACT LOST OVER WATER - SAR NEG
Border Laos, Thuan Thien 22 miles NW of A Shau
ATTEMPT RESCUE DOWNED PILOT, GROUND FIRE, EXPLD/BURN
---------
nov14.98
Air Force Looks for Missing Copter
The Associated Press
HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. (AP) -- The Air Force is hoping flight simulations can
help solve the disappearance 30 years ago of a rescue helicopter in Vietnam.
The project may lead to similar efforts to find other aircraft that vanished
during the Vietnam War, former flight engineer Bob Baldwin said Wednesday as
the nation marked Veterans Day.
Baldwin is part of a team of veterans teaming up with the Air Force to find an
HH-3E Jolly Green Giant and its four-man crew. The helicopter named Jolly
Green 23 vanished June 9, 1968, while searching for a downed attack pilot, who
also remains unaccounted for.
Baldwin was part of the wartime effort to find the helicopter. Thirty years
later, he's helping with a new search despite being thousands of miles away
from the scene.
Black and white aerial photos taken in the late 1960s were converted into
digital photos and matched with current maps to recreate the wartime landscape
near the Vietnam-Laos border. Baldwin then used a computer joy stick to fly
through the scene displayed on a console.
``I just closed my eyes and when I opened them up, it was like stepping back
30 years,'' Baldwin said. ``The only thing missing is that the tracers aren't
coming at you'' from antiaircraft guns.
The simulations at the Hurlburt base in the Florida Panhandle allowed Baldwin
and another former pilot to pick out three spots where the helicopter may have
crashed.
A military team in Vietnam searched for four days before the monsoon season
forced them to stop. They plan to resume when the rains end next year, said
Maj. Mike Vaughn, who helps supervise computer mapping and flight simulator
work at Hurlburt.
The team found no sign of Jolly Green 23, but did find wreckage of a Marine
helicopter that had been forced down. All but one of the crew members had
escaped.
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