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.
Thomas T. Hensley
July 24, 1938 – unaccounted for since March 17, 1968
Born Lafayette, Lafayette Parish, Louisiana
Loss location: Laos (loss location; F-105D Bass 04)
Major (posthumous promotion from Capt.), U.S. Air Force; pilot, 469th Tactical Fighter Squadron; F-105D Thunderchief 61-0161 (Bass 04), combat mission over Laos, March 17, 1968
Missing in action — DPAA lists Maj. Thomas Truett Hensley as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt0000000KY4rEAG (verified 2026-09-25). Pilot of F-105D 61-0161 (Bass 04) lost March 17, 1968 on a combat mission over Laos as number four in a flight of four; radioed hit after second pass; large explosion observed; no parachute or beeper; SAR found no crash site and terminated for darkness/weather/enemy activity. While missing, the Air Force promoted him from captain to major. Memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific and on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Birth date and Lafayette, Louisiana, home from POW Network bio (public). Active Pursuit is an analytic category, not a recovered grave.
Thomas Truett Hensley was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, on July 24, 1938, and entered the Air Force from that state. By March 1968 he was a captain flying the F-105D Thunderchief with the 469th Tactical Fighter Squadron — the Thud work that put single-seat fighters into Laos where the map went quiet.
On March 17 he flew Bass 04, the fourth ship in a four-ship combat mission. After his second pass he radioed that he was hit. Other pilots saw a large explosion. No parachute. No beeper that closed the file. Search and rescue found no crash site and stopped for darkness, weather, and enemy fire. While carried missing, the Air Force promoted him to major.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000KY4rEAG 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. Radio calls and a fireball are not a recovered grave.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1965-025
- Content hash
- 6f2ab856 ee11a86e 70857913 46a75ca5 4bbece11 9a3d76be 4816219c 2ab8dff7
- Base anchor
- 0x521612 6609a123 0e915bf9 86bb34b0 dbb5db48 16b54490 6687be13 cb5c0df6 27
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.