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North Vietnamese SAM Downs U.S. F-4 Phantom

July 24, 1965

1965-07-24_NorthVietnam_SA-2Missile
1965-07-24_NorthVietnam_SA-2Missile
A North Vietnamese surface-to-air missile crew stands in front of an SA-2 launcher. (National Museum of the U.S. Air Force)

North Vietnamese troops fire multiple Soviet-built, radar-guided, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) at a flight of U.S. Air Force F-4 Phantoms over North Vietnam. One SAM downs the Phantom flown by pilot Captain Richard P. Keirn and radar intercept officer Captain Roscoe H. Fobair. This is the first instance of a SAM successfully destroying a U.S. aircraft in Vietnam, a significant moment in the history of air combat. Fobair is killed. Keirn successfully ejects and is captured. He spends almost eight years as a POW.1

1Jacob Van Staavern, Gradual Failure: The Air War Over North Vietnam 1965–1966 (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, United States Air Force, 2002), 163–164; Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History, (2nd edition; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 666.