Cutrer, Fred Clay Jr.
Air Force Captain

Fred Clay Jr. Cutrer, age 29, from Pike County Osyka, Mississippi .

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Thursday, August 6, 1964
Death details: On July 3, 2001, the Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii (CILHI, now DPAA) identified the remains of Captain Fred Clay Cutrer Jr., missing from the Vietnam War. Captain Cutrer entered the U.S. Air Force from Mississippi and served in the 405th Fighter Wing. On August 6, 1964, he was the pilot of a B-57B Canberra (tail number 53-3870, call sign “Cuba Delta 4”) on a deployment mission out of Clark Air Base in the Philippines to Bien Hoa Air Base in South Vietnam. During the approach to Bien Hoa, the Canberra struck trees at wing-level and then crashed in the Ma Da Forest, roughly twenty-six miles north of the base. Capt Cutrer was killed in the crash, and search teams were unable to reach the crash site due to enemy presence in the area. In 1992, a joint U.S./Vietnamese team located the crash site and subsequent investigations recovered human remains from among the wreckage. Capt Cutrer was eventually identified from the remains recovered. Captain Cutrer 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