Eric Das
Rank/Branch: Capt./Air Force
Unit: 333rd
Fighter Squadron, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.
Age 30
Date of Birth
Home City of Record: Amarillo, Texas
Date of Loss: April 06, 2003
Country of Loss: Iraq
Loss Coordinates: Near Tikrit
Status: MIA __ Declared Dead, remains identified__ Apr 18, 2003 U.S. Government Report
Category:
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: F-15E
Personnel in Incident: Air Force Maj. William Watkins, Air Force Capt. Eric Das
Source: Compiled by
Last Firebase Veterans Archives Project from one or
more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources,
correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.
Date Updated: 19 April 2003
REMARKS:
Although Air Force Maj. William Watkins and Capt. Eric Das, were aboard an F-15E Strike
Eagle jet fighter that went down in Iraq around 7:30 p.m. EDT Sunday, April 6, the U.S.
military refused to designate the two airmen missing in action (MIA).
Military representatives met the next day with the families of Maj. Watkins and Capt. Das and
told them that the "pilots whereabouts were unknown."
On April 18, 2003, the Pentagon said the remains of missing F-15E pilot
Capt. Eric B. Das had been recovered and identified and that his status was changed from missing to killed in action.
The search for the plane's weapons system officer was continuing, it said.
The Pentagon provided no details on when or how his remains were recovered. It said the
whereabouts of the other crew member, whose name the Pentagon had not released publicly, is
still unknown.
It was unclear April 18, whether only one set of remains was found at the crash site or whether
additional remains were found but had not yet been positively identified.
The fighter jet was reported to have been shot down near Tikrit, although the Pentagon has never
publicly confirmed that.
Das' parents, Bruce and Rosie Das, issued a statement saying their son was killed on Sunday
evening April 6, which was early Monday morning in Iraq. They said he was on a bombing
mission in an F-15E Strike Eagle over northern Iraq when the plane went down under
undetermined circumstances.
"Eric is a son that exemplified what faith in Christ, honor and duty and a life of excellence
meant," the statement said. "His strong faith was an inspiration to our family, friends and his
fellow servicemen, and to all who knew him."
Das and his wife, 1st Lt. Nikki Das, were both deployed to the Persian Gulf for the Iraq war, the
Das family said. They were married in Amarillo on Oct. 20, 2001 and lived in Goldsboro, N.C.
"We talked vividly about what a dangerous life he did lead in the jet and how you just never
know when your time will be up," Nikki Das said in Saturday's editions of the Amarillo Globe-News.
"He said, `Nikki, I have lived such a fulfilled life just in the short amount of time that I have been
alive.' And it struck me because so few people have that kind of perspective of fullness, and then
from even a human side of it, of having such a loving family and growing up in such a loving
home," she said.
An Air Force spokeswoman, Maj. Linda Haseloff, said Das' remains were found at the crash site,
but she had no other information on the circumstances under which the remains were recovered.
Haseloff said the location was classified secret. She did not know when the recovery was made
or by whom.
Das was assigned to the 333rd Fighter Squadron of the 4th Fighter Wing, based at Seymour
Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.
With the Das identification and the death April 18 of an Army soldier in Kuwait, the number of
Americans killed in the Iraq war rose to 128, the Pentagon said.
Army Cpl. John T. Rivero, 23, of Gainesville, Fla., died from injuries sustained when his
Humvee utility vehicle overturned in Kuwait on Thursday. The Pentagon provided no other
details. Rivero was assigned to C Company, 2nd Battalion, 124th Infantry Division at Eustis, Fla.
Two are still listed as missing - the other F-15 crew member and Army Sgt. Edward J. Anguiano,
24, of Brownsville, Texas, missing since his convoy was ambushed March 23 in Iraq.
No Americans are listed as prisoners of war. A Navy pilot, Michael Scott Speicher, who was shot
down over Iraq in an F/A-18 fighter on the opening night of the 1991 Gulf War, is listed as
"missing-captured," and a U.S. intelligence team is in Iraq looking for clues to his
fate. He
originally was declared killed in action, but his status was changed to missing in action and then
"missing-captured," to reflect unconfirmed indications that he was once in Iraqi hands.
Captain Das was born in the Netherlands on Dec. 20, 1972. He graduated
from Amarillo High School in 1991. He attended the Air Force Academy and graduated
in 1995. He married Nikki Skibinski on Oct. 20, 2001, at First Presbyterian Church
in Amarillo.
Survivors include his wife; his parents, Rosie and Bruce Das of Amarillo;
two sisters, Melody Neumann and husband, Stephen, and Elisa Das, all of Amarillo;
his grandmother, Jessie Renne of Minnesota; his aunts and uncle, Patricia and Roy
Hillmann of Nevada and Vicki Cronk of Minnesota; and two cousins, Emily Cronk of
Minnesota and Scott Gutlovics and wife, Rachel, of Minnesota.
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 18, 2003
DOD IDENTIFIES AIR FORCE CASUALTY
The Department of Defense announced today that Capt. Eric B. Das, 30, of Amarillo, Texas, was
killed in action April 7 while supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. Das was assigned to the 333rd
Fighter Squadron, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.
Das was the pilot of an F-15E that went down April 7 during a combat mission in Iraq. The
incident remains under investigation.
The other F-15 crewmember's whereabouts is still unknown and search efforts continue.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Apr2003/b04182003_bt257-03.html
U.S. Veteran
Dispatch
www.usvetdsp.com/main.shtml
