Richard Carolinus Yeend Jr., Captain, USAF (KIA)
October 11, 1938 – June 09, 1968

On August 15, 2003, Joint Task Force–Full Accounting (JTF-FA, now DPAA) identified the remains of Captain Richard Carolinus Yeend Jr., missing from the Vietnam War.

Captain Yeend entered the U.S. Air Force from Alabama and was a member of the 37th Air Rescue and Recovery Squadron. On June 9, 1968, he copiloted an HH-3E Jolly Green Giant (tail number 67-14710, call sign “Jolly Green 23”) that took off from Da Nang Air Base, South Vietnam, on a search and rescue mission for a downed A-4 pilot in Salavan Province, Laos. At the rescue site, the aircraft was struck by enemy fire, crashed, and exploded; Capt Yeend was killed in the incident. An active enemy presence prevented searchers from recovering his remains at the time. Joint search teams eventually recovered human remains from the crash site that U.S. analysts identified as those of Capt Yeend.

Captain Yeend is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.