TUCKER, JAMES HALE Name: James Hale Tucker Rank/Branch: O2/US Air Force Unit: 377th Combat Support Group, Tan Son Nhut AB, South Vietnam Date of Birth: 29 December 1941 Home City of Record: Pawnee OK Date of Loss: 26 April 1966 Country of Loss: North Vietnam Loss Coordinates: 174000N 1062900E (XE591538) Status (in 1973): Missing In Action Category: 4 Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: RF4C Refno: 0317 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. Other Personnel In Incident: Warren L. Anderson (missing) REMARKS: ALL CONTACT LOST SYNOPSIS: 1Lt. James H. Tucker was the pilot of an RF4C Phantom jet flying on an unarmed night reconnaissance flight over a heavily defended North Vietnamese anti-aircraft complex when all contact with their aircraft was lost. His backseater on the mission was Capt. Warren L. Anderson. It was Anderson's third mission in Vietnam. The mission was to photograph an anti-aircraft complex 15 miles north of Dong Hoi, North Vietnam. The aircraft was being monitored by forward radar units in South Vietnam. As the aircraft crossed a mountain range to descended on the target, radio and radar contact was lost, and could not be reestablished. An electronic search was begun immediately and a visual search as soon as daylight permitted. Nothing was ever found of the aircraft or its crew. In 1973, 591 Americans were released from Vietnamese prisons; Anderson and Tucker were not among them. They remained Missing In Action. Following the war, as refugees began to flood the world from Vietnam, thousands of reports of Americans still held captive began to accumulate. By 1988, over 6000 reports have been received by the U.S. Government. A Pentagon panel, after a 5 month review of classified records concluded in 1986 that at least 100 Americans were still alive, held captive in Southeast Asia. Anderson was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for obtaining vital photos on an unarmed craft over the area where he later disappeared. Because there has never been any word of James Tucker or Warren Anderson, their families wonder if they are alive or dead. And, if alive, how much longer much they wait for their country to bring them home?