Thompson, Donald Earl
Navy Lieutenant commander

Donald Earl Thompson from Wellsville, New York, Allegany county.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: February 4, 1967
Death details: On March 7, 2003, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Commander Donald Earl Thompson, missing from the Vietnam War.

Commander Thompson entered the U.S. Navy from New York and served with Fighter Squadron 213, Carrier Air Wing 11. On February 4, 1967, he piloted an F-4B Phantom II (bureau number 153007, call sign “Black Lion 102”) that took off from the USS Kitty Hawk (CVA-63) on a reconnaissance mission along the coast of North Vietnam. During the mission, the aircraft crashed and burned for unknown reasons, killing CDR Thompson. Enemy presence prevented a ground search of the crash site, and his remains were not recovered at the time. In 2001, a joint investigative team traveled to the crash site where they recovered human remains from a burial site that correlated to this loss, and in 2003, U.S. investigators were able to identify CDR Thompson from those remains.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency