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.
William Phelps
December 27, 1947 – unaccounted for since November 23, 1971
Born Cortland, Cortland County, New York (home of record)
Loss location: Saravan Province, Laos (loss location)
Captain (posthumous promotion from 1st Lt.), U.S. Air Force; weapons systems officer / navigator, 4th Tactical Fighter Squadron; F-4E Phantom II 69-7562 (Gunfighter 61), night AC-119 escort over Laos, November 23, 1971
Missing in action — DPAA lists Capt. William Phelps as Unaccounted For (Active Pursuit), profile a0Jt0000000BTiKEAW (verified 2026-09-26). Navigator/WSO of F-4E 69-7562 lost November 23, 1971 near the end of a nighttime gunship-escort mission over Laos with pilot Capt. Robert W. Altus; large fireball observed after ordnance drop; no parachutes or beepers; SAR located crash site in Saravan Province but recovered no remains. While missing, the Air Force promoted him from first lieutenant to captain. 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 Cortland, New York, home from POW Network bio p110 (public). Active Pursuit is an analytic category, not a recovered grave.
William Phelps was born December 27, 1947, and entered the Air Force from New York — Cortland on the public home-of-record line. By November 1971 he was a first lieutenant in the back seat of an F-4E with the 4th Tactical Fighter Squadron out of Da Nang, the night work that put Phantoms beside the slow gunships over Laos.
On November 23 he flew Gunfighter 61 — tail 69-7562 — with Capt. Robert W. Altus as pilot on a nighttime escort for an AC-119. Near the end of the mission both Phantoms were given targets. After the lead left, Gunfighter 61 dropped and called off-target. Then it crashed for reasons the public file never closed, producing a fireball the gunship crew saw. No chute. No beeper. Search teams found the wreck in Saravan Province and brought no crew remains home. While carried missing, the Air Force promoted Phelps to captain.
DPAA profile a0Jt0000000BTiKEAW 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 finding of death is paperwork. It is not a recovered grave.
- Publication
- NN-HERO-1965-026
- Content hash
- 5847a96e 31783432 6722607e 994c40dd e6db6bea 91473318 f1765d57 915e644c
- Base anchor
- 0x224b10 8e2bfb01 398aec0a aabc0f27 5ede1e01 48f315dc 45069322 00e00a4a 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.