Wadsworth, Dean Amick
Air Force Captain

Dean Amick Wadsworth, age 32, from Donley County Clarendon, Texas .

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Tuesday, October 8, 1963
Death details: On March 1, 1999, the Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii (CILHI, now DPAA) identified the remains of Captain Dean Amick Wadsworth, missing from the Vietnam War. Captain Wadsworth entered the U.S. Air Force from Texas and was a member of the 1st Air Commando Squadron. On October 8, 1963, he piloted a T-28B Trojan (tail number 53-8373) that also carried a member of the South Vietnamese Air Force in a flight of two aircraft on a combat support mission over Quang Nam Province, South Vietnam. His aircraft crashed during a bombing run in the target area. Capt Wadsworth and the Vietnamese airman were killed in the incident. The active combat in the area precluded the recovery of Capt Wadsworth’s remains at the time. In 1993, a Vietnamese local turned over remains he recovered from a crash site in Quang Nam-Da Nang Province. After a forensic review, the remains were repatriated to the United States. In 1994, a Vietnamese informant directed a joint U.S. and Vietnamese recovery team to the crash site of Capt Wadworth’s T-28B. An excavation of the site in May of 1995 led to the recovery of human remains and personal artifacts. Between 1991 and 1995, U.S. investigators visited the crash site and recovered human remains and artifacts. In 1999 analysts were able to identify Capt Wadsworth from among the remains recovered in 1993 and 1995. Captain Wadsworth is memorialized on Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His name is also inscribed along with all his fallen comrades on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Acconting Agency