American War Hero · Vietnam War · Notice Nearby
No rights-safe contemporary likeness is on file. The record is the service and the writing, not an invented face.
Gary G. Wright
November 20, 1930 – unaccounted for since January 17, 1967
Born San Diego, California
Loss location: North Vietnam near Hoa Binh / Ha Tay area (loss location)
Major (promoted Colonel while missing), U.S. Air Force; aircraft commander, 11th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron; RF-4C Phantom II (65-0888, call sign Gigolo), photo reconnaissance over North Vietnam, January 17, 1967
Missing in action — DPAA lists Col. Gary Gene Wright as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt0000000KYbXEAW (verified 2026-09-22). Aircraft commander of RF-4C 65-0888 (Gigolo) lost January 17, 1967 on a photo reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam after departing Udorn RTAFB; no radio contact after takeoff; search unsuccessful. Navigator 1st Lt. Fredrick J. Wozniak also Unaccounted For. Remains not recovered. Memorialized on the Courts of the Missing, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Active Pursuit is an open investigative track, not a recovered grave.
Gary Gene Wright was born November 20, 1930, and entered the Air Force from California — home of record San Diego. By January 1967 he was a major commanding an RF-4C with the 11th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron out of Udorn, Thailand.
On January 17 he took Phantom 65-0888 — call sign Gigolo — on a daytime photo run against a military radio target in North Vietnam. After leaving Udorn there was no further radio contact. When the fuel clock ran out, search aircraft worked the intended track and found nothing. He was never among the men who came home in 1973. While carried missing, the Air Force promoted him to colonel.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000KYbXEAW still reads Unaccounted For, analytical category Active Pursuit. He is on the Courts of the Missing in Honolulu and on the Wall in Washington. This page will not invent a closed identification the public ledger has not issued. An open case file and a missing reconnaissance crew are the documentation.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1965-015
- Content hash
- d26c929c df7d446d 75793a60 28d49432 af16a335 55819044 6fd077ad 72f146ce
Base stores the content hash, publication number, memorial id, and timestamp — not the full obituary text. The complete memorial remains on Notice Nearby. This is not a legal affidavit.