STEWART, DONALD DAVID

Remains Identified November 2015

Name: Donald David Stewart
Branch/Rank: United States Air Force/E5
Unit:
Date of Birth: 22 January 1937
Home City of Record: COATS NC
Date of Loss: 11 December 1965
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 124855 North  1091028 East
Status (in 1973): Killed In Action/Body Not Recovered
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: C123K
Missions:
Refno: 0209


Other Personnel in Incident: Robert Hosrsky, George McKnight, Mercedes
Salinas,  all remains returned, mass grave.


Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw
data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA
families, published sources, interviews and CACCF = Combined Action
Combat Casualty File. Updated 2020

REMARKS: AC MISSING

ARVN found remains buried in a mass grave, no ID's

REMAINS RETURNED 06/74

CACCF CRASH/AIRCREW/PHU YEN

No further information available at this time.

 

http://www.fayobserver.com/military/a-soldier-s-homecoming-years-two-hearts-one-dream/article_fe99b7cc-ed5e-5120-a9c3-e0ee0e82c6a5.html?mode=story

Posted: Monday, August 24, 2015 11:48 am | Updated: 12:26 pm, Mon Aug 24, 2015.

By Chick Jacobs Staff writer

That nagging doubt deep in Wandra Raynor's soul told her to keep looking.

Even after military authorities assured her that everything possible had been done to find her husband. Even after an official burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Even after they officially closed the case, forcing Raynor and her daughter, Dona Stewart, to travel to Vietnam themselves in search of an answer.

"All I ever wanted was an answer," said Raynor, her eyes misting as the weight of a half-century of searching flooded up once again.

"I just wanted to know where Don was."

Earlier this month, the retired teacher from Angier got an answer. Extensive DNA comparison identified her husband's remains from a 1965 plane crash in the hill country of Vietnam.

Staff Sgt. Don Stewart - Harnett County's first combat casualty in Vietnam, according to county officials - was ready to come home...

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article43874874.html NOV 9, 2015

The remains of Staff Sgt. Donald Stewart, a fallen soldier who died on December 11, 1965 while serving in Vietnam, return home to RDU Airport on Monday, Nov. 9, 2015. He was received by family and friends as well as a military honor guard. The veteran, his widow and daughter were welcomed and escorted by a motorcycle honor guard. Chris Seward cseward@newsobserver.com


Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article43874874.html#storylink=cpy

 
http://www.stripes.com/news/pacific/family-finds-closure-as-vietnam-vet-s-remains-come-home-1.378658

By Wyatt Olson

Stars and Stripes
Published: November 13, 2015

 

...“We didn’t hear a word for 14 years, and then in 1979, they called me from Randolph Air Force Base in Texas — about 10 o’clock at night — and told me that my husband’s remains had surfaced and we had to have a service in Arlington,” said Wandra Raynor, who was pregnant with their first daughter when Stewart, 28, went missing.

The grave was to hold the remains of Stewart and the other three Americans who died in the crash, she said she was told. When Raynor pressed the caller about the remains, she said she was told they consisted of “two pieces of a leg bone and a jaw bone.”

“I kept thinking, that doesn’t make up four people,” Raynor said. “It couldn’t be but three at the most. Or one or two.”

Raynor and her daughter, Dona Stewart, went to the Arlington ceremony and then moved on with their lives. Still, uncertainty nagged at them....

 

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02/2020

https://dpaa.secure.force.com/dpaaProfile?id=a0Jt000000pQkkUEAS

SSGT DONALD DAVID STEWART

Return to Service Member Profiles

On February 27, 1979, the U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii (CILHI, now DPAA) identified the remains of Staff Sergeant Donald David Stewart, missing from the Vietnam War.

Staff Sergeant Stewart joined the U.S. Air Force from North Carolina and was a member of the 309th Air Commando Squadron. On December 11, 1965, he was the loadmaster aboard a C-123B Provider (tail number 56-4376, call sign "Snipe 67") that carried three other crew members and eighty-one members of the Republic of Vietnam Army on a transport mission from Pleiku Air Base, Vietnam, to Tuy Hoa Air Base. The Provider went down during its flight to Tuy Hoa, killing SSgt Stewart and the others on board. Their remains could not be recovered at the time. On June 16, 1974, South Vietnamese military personnel found the crash site in Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam, and collected human remains from the aircraft wreckage. The remains and artifacts were turned over to CILHI, and SSgt Stewart was identified among the remains recovered.

Staff Sergeant Stewart is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. 

If you are a family member of this serviceman, you may contact your casualty office representative to learn more about your service member.