O’Donnell, Samuel Jr.
Air Force Captain
Samuel Jr. O’Donnell from Weatherly, Pennsylvania, Carbon county.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: July 12, 1972
Death details: On July 12, 1972, an F-4E Phantom II (serial number 69-0302) with the call sign “Wolf 8” took off from Ubon Airbase, Thailand, carrying two crew members on a combat mission over North Vietnam. The last radio contact received from “Wolf 8” was on its approach to the target area. The aircraft failed to return to base and radio contact was never re-established, and a search and rescue operation was launched. The search continued for three days but failed to locate the missing aircraft or its two crew members. Later investigations eventually found that “Wolf 8” had crashed in the waters of the Cua Nghe reservoir, and recovered the navigator’s remains from a burial site in a nearby pasture. The pilot is still unaccounted for.
Captain Samuel O’Donnell Jr. entered the U.S. Air Force from Pennsylvania and was a member of the 433rd Tactical Fighter Squadron. He was the navigator aboard this Phantom II when it went missing, and he could not be located following the incident. Captain O’Donnell is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
