Klenda, Dean Albert
Air Force Major

Dean Albert Klenda, age 25, from Riley County Manhattan, Kansas .

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Friday, September 17, 1965
Death details: On March 1, 2016, the Defense POW/MIA Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Major Dean Albert Klenda, missing from the Vietnam War. Major Klenda, who joined the U.S. Air Force from Kansas, served with the 67th Tactical Fighter Squadron. On September 17, 1965, he was piloting an F-105D Thunderchief (serial number unknown) attacking enemy targets in Son La Province when his aircraft was struck by enemy ground fire. He ejected from his aircraft, but failed to separate from his ejection seat before the seat hit the ground. He died on impact and his remains were not immediately recovered. Between 1993 and 1999, investigators located the crash site and conducted several excavations but did not recover any human remains. In 2011, a Vietnamese civilian told investigators that he had discovered human remains, which he buried in a nearby field. In 2014, excavations conducted at that field site uncovered human remains, and modern forensic techniques identified them as Maj Klenda. Major Klenda 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, Atchison Daily Golobe (1965), Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency