Carter, James Louis
Air Force Colonel

James Louis Carter, age 37, from Los Angeles County Pasadena, California .

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Thursday, February 3, 1966
Death details: On June 7, 2004, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Colonel James Louis Carter, missing from the Vietnam War. Colonel Carter entered the U.S. Air Force from California and served with the 310th Air Commando Squadron. On February 3, 1966, he was the aircraft commander aboard a C-123B Provider (tail number 55-4537) on a mission along the border of Laos and South Vietnam. While over Quang Tri Province, radio contact was lost with the aircraft and it crashed for unknown reasons, killing Col Carter. Aerial searches did not locate the crash site, and Col Carter’s remains were not recovered at the time. From 2000 to 2003, joint U.S./Vietnamese investigative teams traveled to the crash site and recovered human remains and aircraft wreckage correlating to this loss; in 2004, U.S. investigators were able to identify Col Carter from those remains. Colonel Carter is memorialized in 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