Richmond County North Carolina

Robert Austin Stubberfield, age 35, from Richmond County Richmond, North Carolina .

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Thursday, May 6, 1965
Death details: On June 20, 1989, the Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii(CILHI, now DPAA) identified the remains of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Austin Stubberfield, missing from the Vietnam War. Lieutenant Colonel Stubberfield entered the U.S. Air Force from North Carolina and was a member of the 45th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron. On May 6, 1965, he piloted an RF-101C Voodoo (tail number 56-045) on a reconnaissance mission over the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam. During the mission, his aircraft received enemy fire and crashed west of the rural village of Vinh Linh, killing Lt Col Stubberfield. His remains were not recovered at the time. In 1988, U.S. investigators traveled to the Thai Nguyen Province where they were permitted access to the Viet Bac Museum to examine artifacts correlating to Lt Col Stubberfield’s aircraft; in 1989, the Vietnamese government repatriated human remains from this loss. U.S. investigators were then able to identify Lt Col Stubberfield from these remains and artifacts. Lieutenant Colonel Stubberfield is memorialized in 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