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.
Charles E. Shelton
April 29, 1932 – unaccounted for since April 29, 1965
Born Utica, Kentucky
Loss location: Northern Laos (loss location)
Captain, 15th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron; RF-101C photo reconnaissance, Laos
Missing in action — DPAA lists Col. Charles Ervin Shelton as Unaccounted For. RF-101C 56-0190 was hit by ground fire near Sam Neua, Laos, on April 29, 1965. He parachuted and made radio contact; weather delayed rescue. Remains have not been recovered. The Air Force entered a presumptive finding of death in 1994 at his children's request. That administrative close is not a recovery.
Charles Ervin Shelton left Utica, Kentucky, for the Air Force and a reconnaissance cockpit. On April 29, 1965 — his thirty-third birthday — he flew an RF-101C Voodoo from Udorn, Thailand, on a photo run over northern Laos. The primary target was closed by weather. Near Sam Neua the aircraft was hit. He got out. Other aircrew heard him on the radio and saw him on the ground. Helicopters could not complete a pickup in the weather. When the search could fly again, he was gone.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency still lists him unaccounted for. He was carried as a prisoner of war longer than any other American from that war, a symbolic holding that ended in 1994 when his children asked for a presumptive finding of death. Promotion to colonel happened on paper while he was missing. This page will not print camp stories that cannot be sourced as public fact. It will say a reconnaissance pilot is still not home, and that the file remains open in the only way that matters: no identified remains.
He is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing in Honolulu and on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. The name on the wall is not a recovery. No rights-safe official portrait is on file here; this register will not invent a face.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1965-001
- Content hash
- 00c30799 ca9735ae 4284b86b d264df90 397aa25e 04a7a8ca 86106e2c 884df35c
- Base anchor
- 0xe9ca93 2648db34 7ab8c2fe e1aa9f91 e41f1ae5 1e692779 b36a52ac 8bf3813c 92
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.