| Birth: | Dec. 18, 1934, USA | | Death: | Jan. 31, 1966
Son La, Vietnam | 
Col. Hamilton of Pepperall, Alabama was listed as MIA after the F-105D ‘Thunderchief' was hit by enemy ground fire over Ha Tinh province. His mission was part of a larger operation, known as Operation Rolling Thunder, which attacked air defense systems and the flow of supplies along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Airborne searches for his crash site that day were unsuccessful. A radio broadcast from Hanoi reported an F-105 had been shot down but did not provide any details. Between July 1993 and November 2000, joint U.S.-Vietnam teams, led by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), conducted four investigations and one excavation searching for the pilot and his plane. An investigation team in March 2000 learned from a Vietnamese villager that an area excavated in 1997 was not the location of the pilot's burial. A second location was then excavated in August and September 2000, which did yield aircraft wreckage, personal effects and human remains. n 2004, three Vietnamese citizens turned over to a JPAC team remains they had found at the same crash site a year earlier. He was a graduate of Cliff High School in Opelika, AL., where he met his wife, Carolyn Wynell Cranford. He then attended Auburn University, and was very commited to his job and his country, moving his family with the Air Force 11 times in 10 years. He was about to leave the Air Force jsut before Vietnam, but opted to stay for his fellow soldiers and his love of his country. He loved to fly and he always wanted to be buried at Arlington. He was the father of 3 children.
Air Force
469TH Tactical Fighter Squadron
| | | Burial:
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington
Arlington County
Virginia, USA
Plot: Sec 66 Site 269 |
Created by: Elizabeth Reed
Record added: Apr 04, 2006
Find A Grave Memorial# 13849874 |
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