10 June 1969: The U.S. Air Force donated the first North American Aviation X-15, serial number 56-6670, to the Smithsonian Institution for display at the National Air and Space Museum. The first of three X-15A hypersonic research rocketplanes built by North American for the Air Force and the National Advisory Committee (NACA, the predecessor of NASA), 56-6670 made the first glide flight and
Capt Patrick Henry Carroll enlisted in the United States Air Force. His Vietnam tour began his tour on April 9, 1969, and he was assigned to the 355th Tactical Fighter Squadron/31st Tactical Fighter Wing out of Tuy Hoa AB, Vietnam.
On November 2, 1969, LtCol. Lawrence W. Whitford, Jr., pilot (Misty 136), and 1Lt. Patrick H. Carroll (Misty 127), navigator, departed Tuy Hoa Air Base located on the coast of central South Vietnam on a ‘Misty’ Forward Air Control (FAC) mission over the Ho Chi Minh Trail in central Laos. Whitford radioed that he was running out of fuel in Attapeu Province, about 20 miles east of the city of Muong May. He had a scheduled refueling but never appeared. Searches did not reveal any sign of the aircraft crash or the crew.
Several months later, a damaged plane thought to be the plane flown by Carroll and Whitford was found in the area with no bodies inside and nothing to indicate that the crew had perished in the crash. Both Whitford and Carroll were declared Missing in Action. Carroll and Whitford went down in an area heavily infiltrated by enemy forces.
Patrick is memorialized at Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial. This is an American Battle Monuments Commission location and honored on the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Washington DC. Name inscribed at VVM Wall, Panel 16w, Line 19.
