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.
Larry D. Knight
August 24, 1939 – unaccounted for since October 7, 1966
Born Albany, Oregon
Loss location: Vicinity of Hue, South Vietnam / over-water approach corridor (loss location)
First Lieutenant (promoted Major while missing), U.S. Air Force; pilot, 12th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, 460th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing; RF-4C Phantom II (tail 650885), night reconnaissance near Hue, October 7, 1966
Missing in action — DPAA lists Maj. Larry Dale Knight as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt0000000BTYPEA4 (verified 2026-09-22). Pilot of RF-4C 650885 lost October 7, 1966 on a night reconnaissance mission in the vicinity of Hue, South Vietnam; last radio contact with Da Nang controllers while still en route. Search and rescue aborted for weather, then found no trace the next day. Navigator Capt. James A. Treece also Unaccounted For. Remains not recovered. Memorialized on the Courts of the Missing, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Active Pursuit means DPAA still treats recovery as an open investigative track.
Larry Dale Knight was born in Albany, Oregon, on August 24, 1939, and entered the Air Force from that state. By October 1966 he was flying the RF-4C with the 12th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron out of Tan Son Nhut — the unarmed photo bird used to map what ground commanders needed to see.
On the night of October 7, he took Phantom 650885 toward targets near Hue. Controllers at Da Nang heard the airplane still en route. Then nothing. Weather killed the first search. A second search the next day found no wreckage and no crew. He was never listed among confirmed prisoners. While carried missing, the Air Force promoted him to major.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000BTYPEA4 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 register keeps the date, the airplane, and the open file. A finding of death is not a recovered grave.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1965-014
- Content hash
- d7fc1b27 7bb00db0 fcb3fb36 0b37567f 4bcb0794 6e7e27ee a97cbdac 30e69f3c
- Base anchor
- 0xb420b6 11d9188b 6af7e82b 31f4bd85 5398ddb3 eb9fa064 d49f7117 711175e3 af
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