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Name: Arthur Gene Ecklund
Rank/Branch: O2/US Army
Unit: 183rd Aviation Company, 223rd Aviation Battalion, 17th Aviation Group, 1st Aviation Brigade
Date of Birth: 05 May 1943 (Galesburg IL)
Home City of Record: Phoenix AZ
Date of Loss: 03 April 1969
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 115111N 1085848E (BP750005)
Status (in 1973): Missing In Action
Category: 4
Acft/Vehicle/Ground: O1G

Other Personnel in Incident: Perry H. Jefferson (missing)

Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 01 July 1990 from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.


Arthur Gene Ecklund was born in Galesburg, Illinois and lived there until he was ten years old when his family moved to Phoenix, Arizona. He graduated from Central High School there and attended Phoenix College and Arizona State University.
Artie entered the Army in September 1966 and took his basic training at Ft. Bliss, Texas. He was chosen for Officers Candidate School and was commissioned at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. He took helicopter training, then attended fixed wing pilot training, and was deployed to Vietnam shortly after.
On April 3, 1969, U.S. Army 1Lt. Arthur G. Ecklund and his U.S. Air Force observer, Capt. Perry H. Jefferson, were flying a visual reconnaissance mission out of Phan Rang airbase. They left the base at 0700 hours in an O1G aircraft (serial #51-12078) and reported in by radio at 0730 hours giving their location, destination and information concerning a convoy they were going to check out. No further communication was heard, except for a signal "beeper".
Extensive search efforts began at 0950 hours with all available aircraft, and continued for three days without success. The aircraft is believed to have occurred in an area occupied by enemy forces, thus preventing a ground search.
On April 15, 1969, a Vietnamese source reported that he had been in contact with a communist Montagnard who claimed the Viet Cong had shot down an aircraft with two Americans in it, and the Americans had been wounded, but were alive, and being held in captivity. He said the aircraft was shot down between Phan Rang and Cam Ranh City. A later report indicated that two men fitting the description of Ecklund and Jefferson were seen on a trail being guarded by Viet Cong, and that they appeared to be in good health.
The U.S. Defense Department list Jefferson's loss coordinates near the coastline of Vietnam, about 20 miles south of Cam Ranh, while Ecklund's loss coordinates are listed about 10 miles southwest of Cam Ranh and about 15 miles northwest of those of Jefferson. Both men are listed as lost in Ninh Thuan Province, South Vietnam.
The presence of the reports of captivity and the emergency radio "beeper" lends weight to the fact that the two men were captured. There can be no question that the Vietnamese know the fate of two men. As reports concerning Americans still alive in Southeast Asia continue to flow in, it becomes increasingly more important to find out what happened to the men we left behind. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to keep pushing this issue inside the Beltway... The need to get specific answers is more important now than ever before. If still alive, some MIAs are now in their 70s...They don't have much time left. We have to demand the answers from the bureaucrats and keep standing on their necks (figuratively speaking) until they get the message that THEY work for US and that we are serious about getting these long overdue responses. Diplomatic considerations aside... We can no longer allow questionable protocols established by pseudo-aristocratic armchair strategists, to determine or influence the fate of the men who were in the trenches while the diplomats were sharing sherry and canapes and talking about "Their Plans" for the future of SE Asia.
If you'd like to see what some others are doing in addition to writing their congressmen, senators and the Whitehouse, check out some of these sites:
http://hawk.nji.com/~mred/mialist.htm

Another remarkable site is by an 11 year old angel who never even set foot on American soil...She not only put up a page...she started a major project for an organization of Kids on the Net called KeyPals International.
Her MIA page is at http://www.oocities.org/~angelicdevil/mia.html but don't miss her Bring Grandpa Home page at http://www.worldkids.net/clubs/kci/projects/Bring.html. If you come away from that site without a lump in your throat, then you just weren't paying attention.

After reading about 1Lt Arthur Gene Ecklund, I just had to adopt him and make this page. You see, it hit a little too close to home for me. I am not only from Phoenix, AZ, but I also attended Central High School. We must do something to help find our missing brothers and sisters, so please, adopt a MIA, and give them thier identity that they deserve.

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All Biographical and loss information on POWs provided by Operation Just Cause have been supplied by Chuck and Mary Schantag of POWNET. Please check with POWNET regularly for updates.


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