HOFF, SAMMIE DON
Remains Returned 12/15/88

Name: Sammie Don Hoff
Rank/Branch: O2/US Air Force
Unit:
Date of Birth: 24 September 1941
Home City of Record: Kennedy TX
Date of Loss: 30 August 1966
Country of Loss: North Vietnam 
Loss Coordinates: 173700N 1062000E (XE414481)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category:2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: F4C
Refno: 0441
Other Personnel in Incident: Kenneth D. Robinson (remains returned)

Source: Compiled 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 in 1998.

REMARKS: EJECT - BRIEF RAD CTC

SYNOPSIS: Captain Kenneth D. Robinson, pilot, and 1Lt. Sammie D. Hoff,
bomber/navigator, were the crew of an F4C Phantom fighter/bomber sent on a
mission over North Vietnam on August 30, 1966.

When the aircraft was over Quang Binh Province, it was shot down, and the
pilot gave the order to eject. Hoff, the backseater ejected first, and other
aircraft in the area had brief radio contact with him. It is assumed that
Robinson also safely ejected.

The Hoff and Robinson families waited for seven years for the war to end and
for their men to come home, but Hoff and Robinson were not released in 1973
when 591 American prisoners of war returned. The Vietnamese denied any
knowledge of Hoff, Robinson, or the nearly 2500 others still missing,
prisoner or unaccounted for.

Since the war ended, both the Hoff and Robinson families have been haunted
by uncertainty. Although nearly 10,000 reports concerning missing Americans
in Southeast Asia were received, and many experts believed hundreds were
still alive, they did not know whether to wish their men alive or dead.

In early 1989, the U.S. announced that remains previously turned over to
them by the Vietnamese had been positively identified as 1Lt. Hoff and Capt.
Robinson. The question is, when did they die - and why has it taken so long
for them to come home? And, of course, where are the others?