Salinas, Mercedes Perez
Air Force Staff sergeant

Mercedes Perez Salinas, age 37, from Hidalgo County Mission, Texas .

Spouse: Suzanne Salinas

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Saturday, December 11, 1965
Death details: On February 27, 1979, the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii(CILHI, now DPAA) identified the remains of Staff Sergeant Mercedes Perez Salinas, missing from the Vietnam War. Staff Sergeant Salinas joined the U.S. Air Force from Texas and was a member of the 309th Air Commando Squadron. On December 11, 1965, he was the flight engineer aboard a C-123B Provider (tail number 56-4376, call sign “Snipe 67”) that carried three other crew members and eighty-one members of the Republic of Vietnam Army on a transport mission from Pleiku Air Base, Vietnam, to Tuy Hoa Air Base. The Provider went down during its flight to Tuy Hoa, killing SSgt Salinas and the others on board. Their remains could not be recovered at the time. On June 16, 1974, South Vietnamese military personnel found the crash site in Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam, and collected human remains from the aircraft wreckage. The remains and artifacts were later turned over to CILHI and SSgt Salinas was identified among the remains recovered. Staff Sergeant Salinas 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, Corsincana Daily Sun (1966)