The following post is by Charles Kincaid, brother of ATN2 Richard Kincaid:
ATN2 Richard H. Kincaid was born on March 5, 1947 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to Arthur and Ruth Kincaid. ATN2 Kincaid was a member of the United States Navy’s “Fleet Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1)”.
At 0700 AM local time on Tuesday, 15 April 1969 a United States Navy Lockheed EC-121M Warning Star of Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1) on a reconnaissance ) took off from the United States Naval Air Station at Atsugi, Japan on a routine intelligence-gathering reconnaissance mission
ATN2 Kincaid had previously flown about 200 such missions, so there was no reason to believe that April 15th, 1969 would be any different from the rest.
Aboard (VQ-1) were 8 officers and 23 enlisted men under the command of LCDR James Overstreet. Nine of the crew, including one marine NCO, were Naval Security Group cryptologic technicians (CTs) and linguists in Russian and Korean.
The Lockheed EC-121M Warning Star of Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1) was shot down by North Korean MiG-21 aircraft over the Sea of Japan. The plane crashed 90 nautical miles off the North Korean coast and all 31 Americans (30 sailors and 1 marine) on board were killed, which constitutes the largest single loss of U.S. aircrew during the Cold War era. North Korea not only acknowledged the shoot down, they loudly and boastfully celebrated their action to celebrate the centenary of the birth of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang on April 15th
6 March 2018 at 18:59
I was a member of VQ-1 at Atsugi, Japan. I was aware of the missions my fellow Navy members were doing. I had been out of the Navy about a year when this happened. I saw and read about in the Navy Times. I knew many of the men on board that flight. Sorry for your loss.
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7 March 2018 at 18:09
Sorry for your loss and also for the loss of the other 30 Americans aboard that aircraft.
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