McKnight, George Parker
Air Force Captain

George Parker McKnight, age 19, from Lafayette County Lafayette, Louisiana .

Spouse: Lois H. McKnight

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Saturday, December 11, 1965
Death details: On May 4, 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Captain George Parker McKnight, missing from the Vietnam War. Captain McKnight joined the U.S. Air Force from Louisiana and was a member of the 309th Air Commando Squadron, 315th Air Commando Group. On December 11, 1965, he was the copilot of a C-123B Provider (tail number 56-4376, call sign “Snipe 67”) that carried three other crew members and eighty-one South Vietnamese personnel on a transport mission from Pleiku Air Base, Vietnam, to Tuy Hoa Air Base. The Provider went down during its flight to Tuy Hoa. Search teams found its wreckage on December 23, 1965, but no signs of survivors or remains were found at the time. In June 1974, a local recovery team traveled to the “Snipe 67” crash site and recovered remains among the wreckage; however, none of these remains could be individually identified at the time. In 2017, extensive analysis and modern forensic techniques identified Capt McKnight among the remains recovered. Captain McKnight 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, The Times (1966)