Nyhof, Richard E
Air Force Technician sergeant

Richard E Nyhof from Fremont, California, Alameda county.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Sunday, June 18, 1972
Death details:  On October 12, 1994, Joint Task Force–Full Accounting (JTF-FA, now DPAA) identified the remains of Technical Sergeant Richard E. Nyhof, missing from the Vietnam War.

Technical Sergeant Nyhof entered the U.S. Air Force from California and was a member of the 16th Special Operations Squadron. On June 18, 1972, he was a gunner aboard an AC-130A gunship (tail number 55-0043, call sign “Spectre 11”) that took off from Ubon Airfield, Thailand, on an armed reconnaissance mission over the A Shau Valley, South Vietnam. The aircraft was shot down by an enemy surface-to-air missile near the border of Laos and Vietnam, killing TSgt Nyhof. His remains could not be recovered at the time. In 1993, U.S. investigators visited the crash site and recovered personal artifacts and human remains, and used modern forensic techniques that identified TSgt Nyhof among these remains.

Source: National Archives, UPI, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency