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.
Robert W. Altus
August 7, 1946 – unaccounted for since November 23, 1971
Born Sheridan, Yamhill County, Oregon (home of record)
Loss location: Saravane Province, Laos (loss location)
Captain, U.S. Air Force; pilot, 4th Tactical Fighter Squadron; F-4E Phantom II 69-7562 (Gunfighter 61), night AC-119 escort over Laos, November 23, 1971
Missing in action — DPAA lists Capt. Robert Wayne Altus as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt0000000BTiFEAW (verified 2026-09-25). Pilot of F-4E 69-7562 lost November 23, 1971 near the end of a nighttime gunship-escort mission over Laos; large fireball observed after ordnance drop; no parachutes or beepers; SAR located crash site in Saravan Province but recovered no remains. Memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Birth date and Sheridan, Oregon, home from POW Network bio (public). Active Pursuit is an analytic category, not a recovered grave.
Robert Wayne Altus was born August 7, 1946, and entered the Air Force from Oregon — Sheridan on the public home-of-record line. By November 1971 he was a captain flying the F-4E with the 4th Tactical Fighter Squadron out of Da Nang, the night work that put Phantoms beside the slow gunships.
On November 23 he took tail 69-7562 — Gunfighter 61 — with 1st Lt. William Phelps as weapons systems officer on a nighttime escort for an AC-119 over Laos. Near the end of the mission both Phantoms were given targets. After the lead left, Gunfighter 61 dropped and called off-target. Then it crashed for reasons the public file never closed, producing a fireball the gunship crew saw. No chute. No beeper. Search teams found the wreck in Saravan Province and brought no crew remains home.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000BTiFEAW still lists him Unaccounted For, analytical category Active Pursuit. He is on the Courts of the Missing in Honolulu and on the Wall in Washington. A finding of death is paperwork. It is not a recovered grave.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1965-023
- Content hash
- c4740333 c9f42b6b 979ef43f f0288375 f012c009 dd5dd78a 883ae532 f78cc06b
- Base anchor
- 0x6b3dee 52244cb4 471c19f3 d2848f57 ddbc6609 c68f4301 7aa92a31 67d7364c 08
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.