Perry, Randolph Allen Jr.
Air Force Lieutenant colonel
Randolph Allen Jr. Perry, age 35, from Montana, Lincoln county.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Wednesday, December 20, 1972
Death details: On September 29, 2003, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Allen Perry Jr., missing from the Vietnam War.
Lieutenant Colonel Perry joined the U.S. Air Force from Montana and was a member of the 346th Bombardment Squadron. On December 20, 1972, he was a crew member aboard a B-52D Stratofortress on a bombing mission against enemy targets in Hanoi, Vietnam. The B-52D was shot down by a surface-to-air missile during the mission, and Lt Col Perry was killed in the resulting crash. Enemy control of the are prevented search efforts for those lost in the incident. In 1985, a joint U.S. and Vietnamese search team recovered a set of remains from the B-52D’s crash site outside of Hanoi. Advances in forensic techniques eventually allowed the remains to be identified as those of Lt Col Perry.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency