Name: Don Charles Wood

Rank/Branch: O3/US Air Force

Unit: 354th Tactical Fighter Squadron, Takhli AB, Thailand Date of Birth: 11 November 1929

Home City of Record: Provo UT

Date of Loss: 16 January 1966

Country of Loss: Laos Loss

Coordinates: 193210N 1030825E (TG959751)

Status (in 1973): Missing In Action

Category: 2

Acft/Vehicle/Ground: F105D

Other Personnel In Incident: (none missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 April 1990 with the assistance of one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.

REMARKS: POSS CAPT - ID IN PL FILM

SYNOPSIS: The Plain of Jars region of Laos was long been controlled by the communist Pathet Lao and a continual effort was made by the secret CIA-directed force of some 30,000 indigenous tribesmen to strengthen anti- communist strongholds
there. The U.S. committed hundreds of millions of dollars to the war effort in Laos. Details of this secret operation were not released until August 1971.

Don C. Wood's F105D fighter plane was flying as the number five aircraft in a flight of five on a combat mission over the Plain of Jars region on January 16, 1966. He was observed making a pull-up from the target, but the other aircraft then lost sight
of him. He did not return to friendly control, and was declared Missing in Action. His wife and six children were told that there was the possibility that he had been taken prisoner as he had been identified from a Pathet Lao film of American prisoners of
war.

Wood is among nearly 600 Americans who were lost in Laos. Because Laos was "neutral", and because the U.S. continued to state they were not at war with Laos (although we were regularly bombing North Vietnamese traffic along the border and
conducted assaults against communist strongholds thoughout the country at the behest of the anti-communist government of Laos), and did not recognize the Pathet Lao as a government entity, the nearly 600 Americans lost in Laos were never
recovered.

The Pathet Lao stated that they held and would release the "tens of tens" of American prisoners they held only from Laos. At war's end, no American held in Laos was released - or negotiated for.

Alarmingly, evidence continues to mount that Americans were left as priosoners in Southeast Asia and continue to be held today. Unlike "MIAs" from other wars, most of the nearly 2500 men and women who remain missing in Southeast Asia can be
accounted for. If even one was left alive (and many authorities estimate the numbers to be in the hundreds), we have failed as a nation until and unless we do everything possible to secure his freedom. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to
keep pushing this issue inside the Beltway... The need to get specific answers is more important now than ever before. If still alive, some MIAs are now in their 70s...They don't have much time left. We have to demand the answers from the bureaucrats and keep standing on their necks (figuratively speaking) until they get the message that THEY work for US and that we are serious about getting these long overdue responses. Diplomatic considerations aside... We can no longer allow questionable protocols established by pseudo-aristocratic armchair strategists, to determine or influence the fate of the men who were in the trenches while the diplomats were sharing sherry and canapes and talking about "Their Plans" for the future of SE Asia.