DPAA Shipment 157: What’s New! Interesting Document
One report in the most recent set of documents details information from a file concerning the July 25, 1968 shoot-down of a U.S. F-4 aircraft over Nghe An Province, Vietnam, and the subsequent capture of an American pilot (REFNO 1236). In addition to describing these events, the file includes a translation of a 2018 Vietnamese newspaper article that focuses on a female wartime air defense militia member who operated in the province during the time of the pilot’s capture. A photograph of the militia member is attached as well. For more information, please see the document “A U.S. F-4 Aircraft Is Shot Down Over Nghe An Province, Vietnam On 25 July 1968; US Pilot Captured On 13 June 1968 (Case 1236).”

The title of this collection is "Correlated and Uncorrelated Information Relating to Missing Americans in Southeast Asia." It consists of a database of more than 160,000 metadata records designed to assist researchers in searching and accessing original U.S. Government documents pertaining to U.S. unaccounted-for personnel from the Vietnam conflict. The U.S. Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), formerly the Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO), declassifies these documents and releases them to the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress for metadata tagging and posting them online for public access. The Vietnam War dates from November 1955 through April 30, 1975. The items in this Collection date from this period and, since the search for the unaccounted for is still active, are still updated quarterly.

Title X of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1992 and 1993, commonly referred to as the “McCain Bill,” required the Secretary of Defense to make information related to the treatment, location, or condition of U.S. personnel who are unaccounted for from the Vietnam War available to the public in a “library-like location within a facility within the national capital region for public review and photocopying.” A research entity within the Library, the Federal Research Division (FRD), was selected for this task.

The Library has maintained online access to the metadata and most of the original records via this database since 1994. For some of the oldest metadata records, however, online access to the original document may not be available. In order to see the original records not available online, contact the Library of Congress Microform Reading Room at 202-707-4773 to obtain access. Be prepared to provide the Reel number and Page numbers of the document you wish to obtain. The database was last updated on September 12, 2024. It contains 164,225 records with 163,027 records having accompanying PDFs and 1,198 records with no accompanying PDFs.