Minot North Dakota

David Donald Berdahl, age 19, from Ward County Minot, North Dakota .

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Thursday, January 20, 1972
Death details: On January 20, 1972, a UH-1H Iroquois (tail number 69-16717) carrying four crew and four passengers took off on a recovery mission for downed U.S. pilots. The aircraft was returning from the rescue mission when it was hit by enemy ground fire southeast of Khe Sanh combat base in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam. The aircraft caught fire and crash landed on the bank of the Rao Quan River, in the vicinity of (GC) XD 883 408. A rescue crew member observed an individual from the loss aircraft pinned face down in the burning wreckage, but was unable to extricate him. Hostile forces in the area prevented further rescue attempts at the crash site, and two members of the crew remain unaccounted for. Private First Class David Donald Berdahl, who joined the U.S. Army from North Dakota, was a member of Troop D, 3rd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. He was a door gunner aboard the UH-1H when it went down, and was lost with the aircraft. His remains were not recovered following the incident. Today, Private First Class Berdahl 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, Bismarck Tribune (1972), Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency