CORDOVA, SAM GARY
Remains Returned December 15, 1988
Name: Sam Gary Cordova
Rank/Branch: O2/US Marine Corps
Unit: VMFA 232, 1st Marine Air Wing
Date of Birth: 27 August 1943
Home City of Record: Huntington Beach CA
Date of Loss: 26 August 1972
Country of Loss: Laos
Loss Coordinates: 203058N 1043300E (VH531685)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 1
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: F4J
Other Personnel In Incident: Backseater - Darrell Borders [rescued]--
regular back-seater, Dick Lamers was ill/or had a broken leg. Borders flew.
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 April 1991 from one
or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources,
correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.
Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK with information from Steven P. Albright
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS: Sam Cordova was the pilot of an F4J fighter jet shot down over
Laos on August 26, 1972. His plane was downed on the border of Laos and
Vietnam in Houa Phan Province near the city of Sop Hoa. His F-4J was Bureau
of Aeronautics Number 155811, and he was shot down by a MiG-21, the only
Marine jet ever to be lost to enemy aircraft during the Vietnam War. Cordova
wa part of a two-plane flight. The NVAF pilot who shot him down was Nguyen
Duc Soat, of the 3rd Company, and it was his fifth of six aerial kills. Lt.
Cordova spoke to U.S. aircraft in the area over his survival radio while
safely parachuting from his aircraft. He later radioed that he had fallen
into a ravine and heard his pursuers approaching. According to a member of
Cordova's squadron, Sam Cordova's last transmission stated that he was going
to be captured if he wasn't picked up immediately.
Cordova's backseater was rescued, but rescue attempts for Cordova were
hampered because of heavy ground fire. Sam's emergency radio beeper was
traced to Ban Na Ca Tay, a Viet Cong village. Attempts to contact him
through the device failed. This seemed clear indication that Cordova was
captured, but he was classified Missing in Action.
It was never determined whether or not Sam was captured. Although the Lao
stated publicly that they held "tens of tens" of American prisoners, less
than a dozen names were ever discovered of Americans held by the Lao.
When the Peace Agreements were signed in Paris in 1973, ending American
involvement in the Vietnam war, Laos was not included. The U.S. did not
negotiate the release of Americans held in Laos because it did not recognize
its communist government. As a result, not one American was released from
Laos.
The families of men like Sam who were known to have survived their loss
incident have fought for years for information on their men, and have
prodded incessantly for more action to free them. They have been tantalized
by thousands of reports from refugees relating to missing men in Southeast
Asia, and believe there is every likelihood that there are still men alive
there in captivity.
In return for the U.S. Government's humanitarian assistance to Laos, and
more recently, in the private building of medical clinics in Laos, the
government of Laos agreed to assist in excavating a limited number of
American crash sites. Several remains have been recovered through the crash
site excavations, although several of the identifications have proven to be
erroneous.
In a seemingly humanitarian gesture to Presidential Envoy General John
Vessey, the Vietnamese have turned several dozen remains over to U.S.
control. Although several of these remains have turned out to be non-human,
many have been identified as U.S. servicemen.
In December 1988, Sam Cordova came home to be buried in American soil. When
the last American troops left Southeast Asia in 1975, some 2500 Americans
were unaccounted for. Reports received by the U.S.Government since that time
build a strong case for belief that hundreds of these "unaccounted for"
Americans are still alive and in captivity.
"Unaccounted for" is a term that should apply to numbers, not men. Nearly
600 men were left behind in Laos, and our government did not negotiate their
release. We, as a nation, owe these men our best effort to find them and
bring them home. Until the fates of the men like Cordova are known, their
families will wonder if they are dead or alive .. and why they were
deserted.
Sam G. Cordova was promoted to the rank of Major during the period he was
maintained missing.
--------------------------
The Orange County Register
March 15, 1989
Army Identifies body of MIA pilot
Family's quest for answers about aviator shot down in Laos ends
An Army laboratory has identified the remains of a Marine Corps fighter
pilot from Huntington Beach who was shot down over Laos in 1972 and has been
listed as missing ever since.
Maj. Sam Gary Cordova, a former elementary school teacher in the Ocean View
School District, was one of six American MIAs from the Vietnam War whose
fate was revealed Tuesday, by the Pentagon.
They were identified by the Army's Central Identification Laboratory in
Honolulu. The remains of five of the six, including Cordova, were given to
the United States by Vietnam late last year.
"I don't know whether to feel happy or sad," said the pilot's mother,
Eleanor Cordova, from her home in Rancho Mirage. "It's rough. You think
you are going to be prepared but it doesn't work like that.
"Naturally, there's always the hope that maybe he's one of the lucky ones
and he'll come back. But it didn't work out that way."
Cordova, 69, and her husband, Leo, 72, believed they had good reason to
hope.
There were many Americans who saw Cordova alive on the ground after his F4J
Phantom jet was shot down near the North Vietnamese border Aug. 26, 1972 -
one day before his 29th birthday.
"They picked up his radar man but they couldn't get to him because the
(rescuing) helicopter was being shot at," Eleanor Cordova said. "They had
to leave."
In a 1973 interview, Leo Cordova said that the day after the aborted rescue
attempt, his son was seen alive in a nearby village. The senior Cordova, a
retired florist, went to Laos in an attempt to find his son and received
some encouraging words from Laotian officials.
But Dec. 23 of last year, US authorities told the Cordovas that they had
tentatively identified their son's remains through dental X-rays. Monday,
it was made final, Eleanor Cordova said. Although the officials were able
to provide some details of her son's capture, she declined to discuss them.
Sam Cordova grew up in Torrance, Whittier and La Mirada and attended
Whittier College. He received a bachelor's degree in education in 1965 and
a master's degrees in the same field in 1968.
He taught sixth grade in Whittier before moving to Huntington Beach and
accepting a position in the Ocean View district. His mother said he taught
there less than one year before entering the Marine Corps officer-training
school at Quantico, Va.
[(from The LA Times)
The elder Cordovas are retired owners of a florist shop in
Whittier, where Sam - one of their three sons, attended college and
taught school before he moved to Huntington Beach.
A spokeswoman for the Ocean View School District in Huntington
Beach said Sam Cordova taught sixth grade at the Haven View
Elementary School on Waikiki Lane for a semester during the 1968 -
69 school year.
Bill Wernett of Orange, now retired but then principal of Haven
View, has vivid memories of the young teacher.
"He was only with us a short time, but he was one of the most
vibrant people I've ever met in the teaching profession," Wernett
said. "He had kind of a magnetic personality. He was interested
in everything, and the students loved him."
Wernett said Cordova was teaching at the school when the young man
received confirmation from the Marines that he had been accepted
for pilot training.
"He once gave me this little ornamental turtle that I used to keep
on my desk and which I still have," Wernett said. "I always
wondered what happened to him."
Eleanor Cordova said her son, despite his love for teaching, had
always dreamed of flying airplanes. He also spent much of his
spare time playing tennis, an activity he continued in the
military.]
He received flight training in Pensacola, Fla. and Brownsville, Texas, and
was first posted in Hawaii before being sent into Southeast Asia. He had
been there eight months before being shot down over the Houa Phan province
of Laos, near, the city of Sop Hoa. Although he was shot down in Laos, the
Pentagon said Tuesday it was not surprised that his remains were returned by
the Vietnamese because the area was controlled by North Vietnam at the time.
Cordova's remains and those of four of the other servicemen are to be flown
from Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii to Travis Air Force Base in California
today. "The remains-of the fifth serviceman, who was not identified, will be
buried in Hawaii, in accordance with the wishes of his family. Besides
Cordova, those identified Tuesday were Navy Cmdr. Gene A. Smith of Salt
Lake City, Naval Reserve Lt. Cmdr. Frederick J. Fortner of Pomona, Navy
Lt. Cmdr. Michael W. Wallace of Salt Lake City and Air Force Airman lst
Class James E. Pleiman of Russia, Ohio.
Grave side services for Cordova will be held at 12:30 p.m . March 28 at
Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City.
In all, the remains of 182 Americans have been repatriated to the United
States from Vietnam since the end of the war and have been identified.
Twenty-eight others have been identified after recovery from Laos and two
after recovery from China. A total of 2,371 Americans continue to be listed
as missing in Indochina.