Chester Leroy Coons

In LZ, LAOS
Hostile, died while missing, FIXED WING - CREW
AIR LOSS, CRASH ON LAND

DPAA. Internment is at Arlington National Cemetery.

On December 1, 1993, Joint Task Force–Full Accounting (JTF-FA, now DPAA) identified the remains of Aviation Machinist's Mate (Jet Engine Mechanic) 2nd Class Chester Leroy Coons, missing from the Vietnam War.

Aviation Machinist's Mate (Jet Engine Mechanic) Second Class Coons entered the U.S. Navy from North Dakota and was a member of Observation Squadron 67. On February 17, 1968, he was a crew member aboard an OP-2E Neptune (bureau number 131486, call sign "Lindy 12") that took off from Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, on a mission over Savannakhet Province, Laos. While over the target area, the aircraft was hit by enemy small arms fire and crashed on the side of a ridge, killing ADJ2 Coons. The rough terrain and a heavy enemy presence prevented any ground search efforts, and his body was not recovered at the time. In 1992, a joint U.S./Laotian investigative team recovered human remains from a crash site correlating to this loss, and in 1993, U.S. analysts identified ADJ2 Coons from these remains.

Aviation Machinist's Mate (Jet Engine Mechanic) Second Class Coons is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.