Name: Joseph Shaw Ross
Rank/Branch: Captain USAF
Unit: 389th Tactical Fighter Squadron
Da Nang Air Base, South Vietnam
Date of Birth: 26 January 1943
Home City of Record: Ft. Thomas KY
Loss Date: 01 August 1968
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 172235N 1061310E
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 3
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: F4D
Other Personnel In
Incident: William J. Thompson (missing)
Remarks:
SYNOPSIS: Capt. Joseph Ross and Col. William Thompson comprised the crew of the lead aircraft in a flight of two F4-Ds which departed Da Nang Air Base, Republic of Vietnam on August l, 1968, on a night armed reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam. Enroute, the flight was diverted to look for truck traffic in the vicinity of their original target. Locating the traffic, Thompson, the plane's pilot, dropped several sets of flares and illuminated a group of trucks. He told his wingman to circle the area while he made a bombing pass on the trucks. As the wingman circled, he noted a large explosion within several hundred feet of the target area, and immediately attempted to contact Thompson, but with no success. The explosion occurred about 3:10 a.m. The wingman saw no parachutes and heard no beepers.
About daybreak, search planes heard an emergency electronic signal which seemed to come from the area where Ross and Thompson were lost. Searchers were unable to get any response to calls over the emergency frequency, and terminated the search around noon. Flare chutes were found near the truck target, but no wreckage of the F4 was found.
The area in which Capt. Ross and Col. Thompson went down is very near the Ban Karai Pass on the Laos/Vietnam border. It is mountainous with peaks ranging from 3500-4000 feet and deep valleys dense with multiple canopy jungle. One searcher described the mountains "of sharp pointed grey rock karsts in great frequency closely jammed up like the stalac- tites of a sound suppression chamber".
Thompson and Ross were lost in harsh, largely unpopulated terrain, and without access to the area, it cannot be known with any certainty what happened to them. There have been thousands of reports, however, of Americans who remain in captivity years after the war's end. Two of them could be Thompson and Ross. Their families will not know until those live prisoners are brought home.
