Callanan, Richard Joseph
Air Force Captain

Richard Joseph Callanan, age 35, from Contra Costa County Concord, California .

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Friday, January 7, 1966
Death details: On January 7, 1966, a C-130 Hercules (61-0972) with a crew of five took off on a resupply mission to Pleiku, South Vietnam. As the Hercules approached Pleiku, its crew requested landing instructions, but it crashed for unknown reasons before it could land. Witnesses in the tower at Pleiku reported that soon after receiving the landing request from the C-130, they saw two explosions in the distance. Rescue helicopters sent to that area found the C-130’s wreckage in the vicinity of (GC) 49P AR 828 397 where they recovered three sets of remains but were unable to locate the other two crew members. Captain Richard Joseph Callanan, who joined the U.S. Air Force from California, was a member of the 774th Troop Carrier Squadron. He was a crew member aboard the Hercules when it went down on January 7, 1966, and his remains were not recovered from the crash site. He remains unaccounted-for. Today, Captain Callanan is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency