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.
Donald A. Brown
July 19, 1939 – unaccounted for since July 30, 1970
Born Phoenix, Arizona
Loss location: Southern Laos near Attopeu / Plateau des Bolovens area (loss location)
Captain (promoted Major while missing), U.S. Air Force; navigator, 14th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing; RF-4C Phantom II (66-0436), night reconnaissance over southern Laos, July 30, 1970
Missing in action — DPAA lists Maj. Donald Alan Brown as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt0000000BTfkEAG (verified 2026-09-21). Navigator on RF-4C 66-0436 lost July 30, 1970 on a night reconnaissance mission over southern Laos; radio contact lost roughly 25 miles north of Muang Fangdeng, Attopeu. Search and rescue through August 1 found no trace. Remains not recovered. Crewmate Capt. Gary A. Chavez also Unaccounted For. Memorialized on the Courts of the Missing, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Donald Alan Brown entered the Air Force from Phoenix and flew night reconnaissance in the RF-4C with the 14th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron out of Udorn, Thailand. On July 30, 1970, he was the navigator on Phantom 66-0436 when the crew took a night photo run into southern Laos — rugged, mostly uncharted ground near the Plateau des Bolovens.
After check-in with the airborne command center and clearance from a forward air controller, radio contact was lost about twenty-five miles north of Muang Fangdeng in Attopeu Province. No further transmissions came. Search and rescue worked the area through August 1 and suspended on August 2. No wreckage or survivors were found. Brown and his crewmate both remain unaccounted for. While carried missing, he was promoted to major.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000BTfkEAG 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 jungle crash site the public ledger has not closed. A night loss and an open case file are the documentation.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1965-011
- Content hash
- 45618907 eb73ee74 76b0307e f32f3293 35c7a6db 3b46f748 d8598de0 b917da82
- Base anchor
- 0x7e01b2 41b51931 ffea62ac a9572a22 8a6aa3b3 e95ae1e8 0a14c9f5 6ee115d5 8f
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.