Brown, Joseph Orville
Air Force Captain

Joseph Orville Brown, age 31, from Fairfield County Norwalk, Connecticut .

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Tuesday, April 19, 1966
Death details: On November 18, 1998, the Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii (CILHI, now DPAA) identified the remains of Captain Joseph Orville Brown, missing from the Vietnam War. Captain Brown, who joined the U.S. Air Force from Connecticut, was a member of Detachment 3, 505th Tactical Air Support Group. On April 19, 1966, he piloted an O-1G Bird Dog (serial number 56-2800) over Khammouane Province, Laos, serving as a forward air controller. During this mission, his plane was shot down and he was killed. Recovery efforts following the crash were unsuccessful. In 1995, a joint U.S./Laotian recovery team located the crash site of the Bird Dog and recovered remains, which were later identified as those of Captain Brown. Captain Brown 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