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 L. Ayers

February 18, 1933 – unaccounted for since April 16, 1970

Born Waterloo, Black Hawk County, Iowa

Loss location: Tri-border area Laos / North Vietnam / South Vietnam corridor (loss location)

Major (promoted Colonel while missing), U.S. Air Force; pilot, 12th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron; RF-4C Phantom II (tail 66-0409), reconnaissance mission April 16, 1970

Missing in action — DPAA lists Maj. Richard Lee Ayers as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt00000001UQxEAM (verified 2026-09-24). Pilot of RF-4C 66-0409 lost April 16, 1970 with navigator Capt. Robert E. Rausch; last known transmission after in-flight refueling while moving north to another target; searches unsuccessful. Remains not recovered. Memorialized on the Courts of the Missing, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. Active Pursuit is not a recovered grave.

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Richard Lee Ayers was born in Waterloo, Iowa, on February 18, 1933, and entered the Air Force from that state. By April 1970 he was a major flying the RF-4C with the 12th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron — the lead seat on photo runs that had to come back with film or not come back at all.

On April 16 he took Phantom 66-0409 with Capt. Robert E. Rausch toward the tri-border seam. After refueling they told controllers they were shifting north. Then the radios went quiet. Search aircraft worked the track and found neither wreckage that closed the file nor either man. He was never carried as a returned prisoner. While missing, the Air Force promoted him to colonel.

DPAA profile a0Jt00000001UQxEAM 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-1965-021
Content hash: ace7f190 53a1914f 8a945c7e a7317c1d cc600d67 37f93347 87090450 da2f404d
Base anchor: 0xfc9347 8314bc66 2749e15b 9cd56178 bba8ed7a 57138594 dd03a853 b208b078 6b

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.