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.
Tommy E. Gist
October 29, 1939 – unaccounted for since May 18, 1968
Born Durant, Oklahoma
Loss location: Over North Vietnam / Gulf of Tonkin area (loss location)
Captain (promoted Major while missing), U.S. Air Force; navigator, 14th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron; RF-4C Phantom II (66-0442, call sign Vacuum), reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam, May 18, 1968
Missing in action — DPAA lists Maj. Tommy Emerson Gist as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt0000000BTHEEA4 (verified 2026-09-21). Navigator on RF-4C 66-0442 shot down May 18, 1968 over North Vietnam; the pilot ejected, was captured, and returned — and reported never seeing Gist after ejecting. Gist was never reported as a POW. 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.
Tommy Emerson Gist entered the Air Force from Durant, Oklahoma, and flew as a navigator in the back seat of an RF-4C with the 14th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron. On May 18, 1968, he was aboard Phantom 66-0442 — call sign Vacuum — on a reconnaissance run over North Vietnam when the airplane was shot down.
The pilot ejected, was captured, and later came home. In debrief he said he never saw the other crewman after leaving the aircraft. Gist was never listed among confirmed prisoners. Remains have not been recovered. While he was carried missing, the Air Force promoted him to major.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000BTHEEA4 still lists him Unaccounted For, analytical category Active Pursuit — an open track, not a closed non-recoverable stamp. 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 file that has not closed. A finding of death is not a recovered grave.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1965-010
- Content hash
- 9ab1f6a0 4cd04740 6d21dd04 ef3b0163 ea984042 93cb96c6 f05f2f28 06a1bfaf
- Base anchor
- 0x2ecf90 bf2fb35d 4e137f24 17f32461 ed280fa9 c8be2c99 36444ae3 efa16a32 3f
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.