Deatsville Alabama

James Thomas Ruffin, age 25, from Elmore County Deatsville, Alabama .

Spouse: Wanda Bryant

Service era: Vietnam
Schools: ROTC graduate of Auburn University

Date of death: Friday, February 18, 1966
Death details: On June 27, 1983, the Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii(CILHI, now DPAA) identified the remains of Lieutenant Commander James Thomas Ruffin, missing from the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Commander Ruffin entered the U.S. Navy from Alabama and served with Fighter Squadron 92. On February 18, 1966, he was the pilot of an F-4B Phantom II (bureau number 152297) on a combat air patrol mission off the North Vietnamese coast. During the mission, his Phantom was shot down by an enemy surface-to-air missile. He ejected before the aircraft crashed into the ocean, but did not survive the incident and his body was not recovered at the time. In 1983, the Vietnamese government repatriated a set of remains to the U.S. that were eventually identified as those of LCDR Ruffin. Lieutenant Commander Ruffin 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