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.
Joseph S. Ross
January 26, 1943 – unaccounted for since August 1, 1968
Born Fort Thomas, Campbell County, Kentucky
Loss location: near Ben Katoi, North Vietnam (loss location)
Captain (posthumous promotion from 1st Lt.), U.S. Air Force; pilot, 389th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 366th Tactical Fighter Wing; F-4D Phantom II 66-8822, night armed reconnaissance near Ben Katoi, August 1, 1968
Missing in action — DPAA lists Capt. Joseph Shaw Ross as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt0000000KZsmEAG (verified 2026-09-25). Pilot of F-4D 66-8822 lost August 1, 1968 on a night armed-reconnaissance mission near Ben Katoi, North Vietnam; large explosion observed near illuminated trucks; no radio contact, parachutes, or beepers afterward; neither crewman located. While missing, the Air Force promoted him from first lieutenant to captain. Memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall (Panel W50, Line 45). Birth date from Virtual Wall / public Kentucky casualty line. Active Pursuit is an analytic category, not a recovered grave.
Joseph Shaw Ross was born in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, on January 26, 1943, and entered the Air Force from that state. By August 1968 he was a first lieutenant flying the F-4D with the 389th Tactical Fighter Squadron — night armed reconnaissance that lit truck parks with flares and then rolled in.
On August 1 he led a two-ship near Ben Katoi in North Vietnam. Over the target his Phantom dropped flares on a group of trucks. The wingman asked for clearance to attack; Ross told him to hold while the lead rolled in first. The wingman then saw a large explosion near the trucks and could raise no radio, no parachute, and no beeper. Neither Ross nor his back-seater came out of that night. While carried missing, the Air Force promoted him to captain.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000KZsmEAG 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. This page will not invent a recovery the public file does not carry.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1965-024
- Content hash
- b3560797 e30ec13b a446877f cfeca2e4 de7fda45 cccfcd44 be8671f6 2769f50c
- Base anchor
- 0xcf73f0 89fec58b e1ea5f74 b53dbad3 399ce630 b76a1b7b 66623f6e ccd789ee 2e
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.