McElroy, John Lee
Air Force Major

John Lee McElroy from Schenectady, New York, Schenectady county.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Sunday, May 12, 1968
Death details: On October 29, 2008, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Major John Lee McElroy, missing from the Vietnam War.

Major McElroy joined the U.S. Air Force from New York and was a member of the 774th Tactical Airlift Squadron. On May 12, 1968, he was the navigator aboard a C-130 Hercules with a crew of six on a mission to evacuate Vietnamese citizens from Kham Duc Special Forces Camp near Da Nang, Vietnam. Hostile ground fire downed the Hercules as it attempted to leave Kham Duc, killing those aboard, including Maj McElroy. In 1993, a joint Vietnamese and U.S. search team interviewed locals in Kham Duc who led the investigators to the C-130’s crash site and turned over some recovered remains. Excavations at the crash site recovered additional remains, as well as personal effects and crew-related gear. In 2008, modern advances in forensic technology allowed for the identification of Maj McElroy from among the remains recovered at the site.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency