Jacobsen, Timothy John
Army Sergeant

Timothy Jon Jacobsen, age 21, from Ferndale, California, Humboldt county.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Sunday, May 16, 1971
Death details: On July 12, 2008, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Sergeant Timothy John Jacobsen, missing from the Vietnam War.
Sergeant Jacobsen joined the U.S. Army from California and was a member of the 101st Aviation Battalion, 101st Airborne Division. On May 16, 1971, he was a crew member aboard a UH-1H Iroquois (tail number 68-15491, call sign “Chalk 7”) on a combat assault mission near Hue, Vietnam. The helicopter was damaged by enemy ground fire as it touched down at the landing zone, causing it to crash into a line of trees and explode. Sergeant Jacobsen was killed in the crash, and his remains could not be recovered following the incident. In 2002, a joint U.S./Vietnamese recovery team interviewed Vietnamese locals who showed the team two burial sites associated with the Chalk 7’s loss, and excavations there in 2006 recovered human remains. Modern forensic techniques were able to individually identify SGT Jacobsen from among the remains recovered.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency