Major Charles Alva Dale and SSG David Stanley Demmon

Major Charles Alva Dale and Staff Sergeant David Stanley Demmon were United States Army soldiers whose plane crashed or was shot down during the Vietnam War on June 9, 1965.

Final Flight

Charles Dale of Phoenix, Arizona, and David Demmon of Venice, California, members of the 73d Aviation Company (Aerial Surveillance), flew out of Vung Tau in an OV-1C Mohawk early in the morning on June 9, 1965 on a surveillance mission. After completing the first part of the mission, during which the aircraft experienced communications difficulties, Dale and Demmon continued on to Vinh Binh Province in South Vietnam. Communications were lost over the U Minh forest and not regained. Search and Rescue operations found no sign of either the aircraft or the crew, and both soldiers were listed as Missing in Action.

Circumstantial Evidence

Shortly after the incident, intelligence sources began reporting that two Caucasians were seen captured by Viet Cong forces in the general time and area in which the plane went missing. For several years after, circumstantial evidence indicated that one or both, particularly Demmon, might still be alive. In 1970, a visitor to a POW Camp in Cambodia reported seeing a man named "Demmon" and matched it to a photograph of him. A defector reported that an American was being held with a "family name of De Manh". When, in late 1970, a prisoner identified a photograph of Demmon as being held in Kampong Cham Province, Cambodia, Demmon's status was officially upgraded to Prisoner of War. During this time, Dale was promoted to Major and Demmon to Staff Sergeant.

Dale and Demmon were not among those released at the end of the war, and were later declared Killed in action.

More recent information

In 1992, the United States Joint Task Force for Full Accounting investigated and was told that both soldiers were killed in the crash and buried by the villagers. Task force members were taken to the burial area, but were unable to find the grave sites.