Watson, Ronald Leonard
Army Captain

Ronald Leonard Watson, age 26, from El Paso, Texas, El Paso county.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Thursday, February 18, 1971
Death details: On February 18, 1971, a UH-1H Iroquois (tail number 68-15255) with four crew members took off as one of four helicopters on an emergency extraction mission for soldiers from a Special Forces camp located on the west side of A Shau Valley in Thua Thien Province, South Vietnam. Enemy troops fired on the Iroquois as it attempted to rescue the ground troops using a stable extraction rig, forcing the pilot to leave the area with three men still attached to the rigs. One of the troops on the extraction rigs fell off into the jungle and was eventually rescued. A short time after he fell, the helicopter was hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire, which caused it to crash and burn with the four crew members and two rescued ground troops still inside. Captain Ronald Leonard Watson entered the U.S. Army from Texas and was a member of Command and Control North, 5th Special Forces Group. He was being extracted by this Iroquois when it was shot down, and he was lost in the incident. His remains were not recovered. Today, Captain Watson is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, findagrave.com