
Joseph Lyons Chestnut, age 36, from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Rutherford county.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Tuesday, October 13, 1970
Death details: On July 19, 1995, Joint Task Force-Full Accounting (JTF-FA, now DPAA) identified the remains of Colonel Joseph Lyons Chestnut, missing from the Vietnam War. Colonel Chestnut joined the U.S. Air Force from Tennessee and was a member of the 56th Special Operations Wing. On October 13, 1970, he piloted a T-28 Trojan (serial number 53-8366) on an orientation flight over Laos. The Trojan crashed during the mission, and Col Chestnut was killed in the crash. Immediate search and rescue efforts failed to locate his remains. In 1995, a joint U.S. and Laotian search team recovered remains from the T-28’s crash site. Later that year, U.S. analysts identified the recovered remains as those of Col Chestnut.
Source: National Archives, UPI (1970), Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency