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.
Richard D. Appelhans
October 29, 1937 – unaccounted for since October 16, 1967
Born Havre / Dodson, Montana
Loss location: Western DMZ / Laos border corridor (loss location per DPAA; historical country of loss Laos)
Captain (promoted Lieutenant Colonel while missing), U.S. Air Force; pilot, 12th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron; RF-4C Phantom II (65-0855, call sign Kodak 64), night photo reconnaissance, October 16, 1967
Missing in action — DPAA lists Lt. Col. Richard Duane Appelhans as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt0000000KZXtEAO (verified 2026-09-23). Pilot of RF-4C 65-0855 (Kodak 64) lost October 16, 1967 on a night photo reconnaissance mission over the western DMZ; last heard after artillery-clearance radio exchange; searches unsuccessful. Navigator Capt. George W. Clarke Jr. also Unaccounted For. Remains not recovered. Memorialized on the Courts of the Missing, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Active Pursuit is an open investigative track, not a recovered grave.
Richard Duane Appelhans was born October 29, 1937, in Montana — Havre by birth, Dodson by home of record — and entered the Air Force from that state. By October 1967 he was a captain flying the RF-4C with the 12th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, the night photo bird that worked the western demilitarized zone alone.
On the night of October 16 he took Kodak 64 (tail 65-0855) on a single-ship run. Ground control heard the crew ask for artillery clearance, grant it, and acknowledge the south exit. That was the last exchange. Searches found no airplane and no crew. While carried missing, the Air Force promoted him to lieutenant colonel.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000KZXtEAO 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 last clearance call and an open case file are the documentation. A finding of death is not a recovered grave.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1965-019
- Content hash
- 7f10fbb4 b48daa28 fd84ba45 aa29ced7 dd674e34 1043a9cf 8d81f71c eec01172
- Base anchor
- 0xe1e348 b2faa087 cbab5b8c 008291f2 b5e94ce3 136cb175 f7f61d7f 78b4c6dc f7
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.