Jesse Donald Phelps
Chief Warrant Officer
AVN CO, 7TH SF GRP, 229TH ASLT HELO BN, 11TH AVN GROUP, 1ST CAV DIV, USARV Army of the United States Boise, Idaho October 01, 1937 to December 29, 1966 (Incident Date December 28, 1965) JESSE D PHELPS is on the Wall at Panel 4E, Line 44 |
|
|
From a friend.
06 Nov 2006 Dear CW2 Jesse D. Phelps, My name is Carrie D. E. Huskinson, I am the friend who submitted this page for you. In the past few years, I have made many phone calls, written many letters, and spoken with people who knew you. I also wear your MIA bracelet. I am sorry I have not been able to do all I wanted for you. My goal has been and will always be, to find flight #808 and her crew. The people I have spoken with have all said great things about you. They said you were kind, thoughtful, considerate, never a bragger, very smart, and a real gentleman. I have met your wife, a kind and caring woman, and I am a friend to your son Dan, a very kind man. They are truly a reflection of you. I was pleased to see they have a Huey with the tail number #808 at Fort Benning, with the names of her crew on the doors. I think you would all be proud of the restoration job that was done on that chopper. Know this, you and your crew will never be forgotten, always missed, and forever loved. I will not give up, and never stop telling people about you and your crew. You are all my heros.
Respectfully, Carrie D. E. Huskinson carriehuskinson@yahoo.com |
Jesse, I enjoyed being your crew-chief through the Air Assault, Dominican Republic, and in Vietnam. Still thinking of you and of chopper #778 that we safely kept in the air through all the trying times.
From his crew chief and friend forever, |
Notes from The Virtual WallThe Vietnam Helicopter Pilots' Association database contains the following statement from Captain Ed Freeman, the platoon leader for this flight: "On Dec. 27th, CWO Phelps was selected to fly from a base camp near Qui Nhon, about 20 miles north of An Khe, to the "golf course" at An Khe. The reason he was selected was because he was the most qualified to fly by instrumentation. The crew stayed the night at An Khe, so they could get a good night's rest and clean up. The next morning they departed from An Khe with a cargo of machine guns and hot food for the troops at the base camp near Qui Nhon. They radioed ahead to the forward camp that they were in the air and on the way. There was no contact after that. Within a short time of being overdue a search was ordered of a grid area that was determined to be where they could have run out of fuel, in all directions. The search went on by air for a period of 3 days. There was one spot that appeared to have had disturbance in the trees and a Chinook helicopter was brought in and troops did rappel into the area. They didn't find anything. A ground search was conducted in various areas, but some areas were not accessible, due to the jungle and swamp conditions."UH-1D tail number 63-08808 of A Company, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion departed An Khe shortly before dawn on 28 December 1965. The planned flight route passed over mountainous terrain in the vicinity of the An Khe Pass. The flight crew consisted of
The aircraft was declared down at 0715 and search-and-rescue operations began at 0730. No trace of the aircraft or its crew was found. The four crewmen were declared to be Missing in Action. During the first annual review of this incident, the Review Board concluded that all available evidence indicated that the four men had died in the crash of their helicopter and their status was changed on 29 Dec 1966 to "Died While Missing/Body not Recovered". The crash site has not been located and the remains of the four crewmen have not been repatriated. The confusion in unit names derives from the fact that the 1st Cavalry Division's 11th Aviation Group was put together in a hurry using personnel and equipment assets taken from other units. In this instance, "A" Company, 229th Avn Bn was formed from aviation companies previously assigned to the Special Forces Groups:
In accordance with a recent Federal law, the Library of Congress has begun posting selected documents regarding ex-POWs and MIAs from the Vietnam war. One such document, a message originated by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command on 20 July 2006, reports on the initial investigation of a UH-1 crash site located at UTM coordinates BR582368, about 12 kilometers southeast of An Khe, conducted on 29-30 April 2006. While no conclusions were drawn, the message states that "Field analysis indicates the witness accounts correlate well with the circumstances of loss associated with case 0224" [63-08808]. |
Contact Us | © Copyright 1997-2019 www.VirtualWall.org, Ltd ®(TM) | Last update 08/15/2019. |