Kipina, Marshall Frederick
Army Staff sergeant

Marshall Frederick Kipina from Calumet, Michigan, Houghton county.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: July 13, 1966
Death details: On February 1, 2018, the Defense POW/MIA Agency (DPAA) announced that the remains of Staff Sergeant Marshall Frederick Kipina, missing from the Vietnam War, have been identified.

Staff Sergeant Kipina, who joined the U.S. Army from Maine, served with the 131st Aviation Company. On July 13, 1966, he was an observer aboard an OV-1C Mohawk that took off from Phu Bai Airfield for a night surveillance mission over Attapu Province, Laos. The aircraft encountered heavy thunderstorms and lost radar and radio contact with its base before crashing in very difficult terrain, killing the crew members. Searches launched after it failed to return to base were unsuccessful, and the crash site was not located until the 1990s. A series of excavations finally located human remains at the site, and DPAA scientists used DNA analysis to identify SSG Kipina’s remains.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency