Musselman, Stephen Owen
Navy Lieutenant

Stephen Owen Musselman, age 26, from Bowie County Texarkana, Texas .

Parents: Ethyl Musselman
Spouse: Norma Jean

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Sunday, September 10, 1972
Death details: On July 20, 1981, the Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii(CILH, now DPAA) identified the remains of Lieutenant Stephen Owen Musselman, missing from the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Musselman joined the U.S. Navy from Texas and was a member of Attack Squadron 82. On September 10, 1972, he piloted an A-7C Corsair II (bureau number 156798) on a mission over Ha Tay Province, Vietnam. Lieutenant Musselman’s Corsair was downed by a surface-to-air missile over Ha Tay; he ejected from the aircraft but died at some point afterwards, although the detailed circumstances of his loss are not known. In July 1981, the Vietnamese government returned a set of remains that they had associated with LT Musselman, and U.S. analysts confirmed the identification a short time later. Lieutenant Musselman is memorialized on 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, Associated Press (1981)