On October 25, 1977, the Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii (CILHI, now DPAA) identified the remains of Lieutenant Richard Cobb Thum, missing from the Vietnam War.

Lieutenant Thum entered the U.S. Navy from Ohio and served with Reconnaissance Heavy Attack Squadron 5, Carrier Air Wing 14. On November 25, 1968, he was a crew member aboard an RA-5C (bureau number 149293, call sign "Old Kentucky 113") that launched from the USS Constellation (CVA-64) on a reconnaissance mission over Nghe An Province, North Vietnam. During the mission, the aircraft was hit by enemy fire and crashed. Lieutenant Thum ejected from the aircraft prior to its crash, but he did not survive the incident and his remains were not recovered at the time. In 1977, the Vietnamese government repatriated human remains correlating to this incident and U.S. investigators were able to identify LT Thum from those remains.

Lieutenant Thum is memorialized in 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.