Hometown: Defiance, OH
Branch: U.S. Air Force
Unit: 14th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron
Military Honors: Distinguished Service Cross (3)
Date of Sacrifice: August 19, 1972 - KIA near Kép, North Vietnam
Age: 27
Conflict: Vietnam War, 1959-1975

Roger Behnfeldt was born in Napoleon, Ohio on September 29, 1944. He and his family lived in nearby Defiance, Ohio, where Roger graduated from North Richland-Adams High School in 1962.

After high school, Behnfeldt traveled 43 miles east to attend Bowling Green State University. There he enrolled in the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and learned to fly. He graduated from Bowling Green in 1968 with a degree in mathematics.

After graduation, Behnfeldt enlisted in the United States Air Force and was assigned to the 14th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron. In December of 1971, he married Doris Nameche.

Just nine months later, then-Captain Roger Behnfeldt was piloting a McDonnell Phantom II Fighter (RF-4C) on a weather reconnaissance mission near Kép, 50 miles northeast of the North Vietnamese capital city of Hanoi, when an enemy surface-to-air missile struck his jet.

Behnfeldt, just 27 years old, was killed in the attack—four months shy of his first wedding anniversary with Doris. His Weapons Systems Officer, Maj. Tamotsu Shingaki, survived the crash and was taken prisoner by enemy North Vietnamese forces.

According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, search efforts failed to locate Behnfeldt at the time, and the Pentagon officially listed him as Missing in Action.

Fifteen years after being shot down over North Vietnam, Maj. Behnfeldt’s remains were recovered on September 24, 1987, and identified by the Army’s Central Identification Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii, on December 4 of that year. He was returned home from Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii to Travis Air Force Base, California following a full military honors ceremony.

In Honolulu, Roger Ernest Behnfeldt’s name is engraved on the American Battle Monument Commission’s “Courts of the Missing,” along with the others who were missing from the Vietnam War. As is the custom, a rosette was placed next to his name to indicate that he has been found.

Roger Ernest Behnfeldt is buried near his hometown, in Bethlehem Lutheran Cemetery. He is honored at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., where his name is inscribed on Panel 1W, Line 68.

In his last letter home to his mother, Behnfeldt said he had 15 to 20 days of leave and didn’t know if he could take them because “they needed good men out there.”

Sources
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency: Maj. Roger Earnest Behnfeldt
Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Wall of Faces: Roger Ernest Behnfeldt
American Battle Monuments Commission: Roger Ernest Behnfeldt
Together We Served: Behnfeldt, Roger Ernest, Capt
AP News: Remains Identified Of Two U.S. Servicemen From Vietnam War
The Tribune (Coshocton, Ohio), December 11, 1987: Friends, family recall pilot lost in Vietnam
The Daily Sentinel-Tribune, August 30, 1972: Waterville man among missing in Vietnam
Burial Site: Find a Grave