William John Lagrand from Portland, Oregon, Multnomah county.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Sunday, September 5, 1965
Death details: On September 5, 1965, an A-1G Skyraider (tail number 132562) carrying two crew members took off from Bien Hoa Air Base, Vietnam, for a one-hour training flight over the Bien Hoa area. During the flight, the aircraft performed a strafing pass but failed to recover out of it and crashed. Witnesses reported that the aircraft exploded on impact, and no parachutes emerged from the plane before it went down. The next day, investigation teams traveled by helicopter to the crash site but were unable to land due to the enemy presence in the area. Three weeks following the crash, it was reported that Viet Cong visited the crash site, removed the remains of the two occupants, and buried them nearby at an unknown location. Both crew members remain unaccounted-for.
Warrant Officer 1 William John Lagrand, who joined the U.S. Army from Oregon, was a member of the 197th Aviation Company, 145th Aviation Battalion. He was a passenger aboard the Skyraider when it crashed on September 5, 1965, and was lost with the aircraft. His remains have not been recovered. After the incident, the Army promoted WO1 Lagrand to the rank of Chief Warrant Officer 2 (CW2). Today, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Lagrand is memorialized on the 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 Accounting Agency