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CARLOCK, RALPH Laurence Name: Ralph L. Carlock Other Personnel In Incident: Source: Compiled by THE P.O.W. NETWORK 02 February 93 from the following published sources - POW/MIA's -- Report of the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs United States Senate -- January 13, 1993. "The Senate Select Committee staff has prepared case summaries for the priority cases that the Administration is now investigating. These provide the facts about each case, describe the circumstances under which the individual was lost, and detail the information learned since the date of loss. Information in the case summaries is limited to information from casualty files, does not include any judgments by Committee staff, and attempts to relate essential facts. The Committee acknowledges that POW/MIAs' primary next-of- kin know their family members' cases in more comprehensive detail than summarized here and recognizes the limitations that the report format imposes on these summaries." On March 4, 1967, Major Carlock departed Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base in an F-105D on an armed reconnaissance mission over Laos. While attacking a truck, the flight leader saw Major Carlock's aircraft hit by enemy fire in the lower center of the fuselage and began to burn. The flight leader radioed Major Carlock to bail out but did not receive a response. The aircraft crashed in the area of Nong Het, Xieng Khouang Province, just inside Laos from Nghe An Province, North Vietnam, and with no evidence Major Carlock had parachuted from the aircraft prior to the crash. Forty minutes later there was a weak beeper from the vicinity of the crash site but it was believed to be a result of fire at the crash site and was not pilot activated. Major Carlock was declared missing in action. On March 5, 1967, the pro-communist Patriotic Neutralist radio station news service reported its forces in Long Met District, Vientiane Province, had shot down a U.S. F-105 aircraft and captured the pilot. U.S. intelligence concluded at the time that this report may have been partially derived from the loss of Major Carlock's aircraft which crashed in Xieng Khouang Province and not in Vientiane Province and the report was not believed to represent a truthful statement that the pilot had been captured. Returning U.S. POWs had no information on the precise fate of Major Carlock. After Operation Homecoming Major Carlock was declared dead/body not recovered, based on a presumptive finding of death. In June 1986, the Joint Casualty Resolution Center received information from a source who described the crash of an aircraft similar to an F-105 in Xieng Khouang Province which had occurred in either 1971 of 1972. Two airmen reportedly died in the crash. In September 1988, JCRC received another report from another source describing a wartime F-105 crash near Nong Het. The pilot reportedly bailed out at low altitude and died when he hit the ground. The body was buried by local villagers accompanied by Vietnamese advisory personnel. These reports were placed in Major Carlock's file due to the correlation to his loss location and the possibility they may have correlated to his loss incident. In October 1990, JCRC received another report from another source describing the October 1967 shoot down of a U.S. aircraft near Nong Het. The pilot bailed out and the source was told the pilot was captured by North Vietnamese Army forces. Due to a number of U.S. aircraft losses in the area of this reported shoot down, some of which involved unaccounted for airmen, no specific correlation could be made to a particular missing airman and the report was placed in the files of airmen unaccounted for in the None Het area. ============================== National League of Families POWMIA UPDATE May 17, 2004 POW/MIAs - VIETNAM WAR: According to DoD, there are now 1,859 Americans listed as missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War: 1,418 in Vietnam, 378 in Laos, 55 in Cambodia and 8 in PRC territorial waters. Over 90% of all Americans missing from the Vietnam War were lost in Vietnam or in areas of Laos and Cambodia under Hanoi's wartime control. Since the last Newsletter, seven Americans have been announced as accounted for: Warrant Officer 2nd Class Jack W. Brunson, USA, KIA/BNR, Laos, 5/31/71, RR 5/29/03
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