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This Remembrance Profile was originally created by Sgt Stephen Willcox - Deceased
The most detailed description of the incident in which Captain Bunker was killed is at http://www.powerwork.com/bios, though the excerpts are from the book by Christopher Robbins, "The Ravens." I've taken excerpts from those reflected on the website as follows:
"...Just before the new year he (Bunker) flew out to the northern edge of the Plain of Jars, near Roadrunner Lake, to verify a recorded sighting of enemy tanks. Sure enough, he spotted the front of a tank protruding from a group of trees and dropped low for a better look. A rapid-fire 14.5 mm antiaircraft gun - deadly to a height of 4,500 feet - opened up at close range and nailed the engine.
Bunker put out a Mayday call before managing to (maneuver) the O-1 onto a flat area in the middle of a horseshoe formed by a bend in a small river. When Bunker climbed out of the cockpit he found himself in open country...He lowered himself into...a small gully choked with brush...Unknown to him, a large group of NVA soldiers were bivouacked along the bank of a distant treeline that followed the curve in the river. He was surrounded on three sides.
Four Ravens heard the distress call and headed toward the downed plane. Bunker said he was hiding in a gully by the side of the O-1 and was being shot at from three sides. Gunfire could be heard over the radio. It seemed to ...grow louder until Bunker announced he was going to make a run for it.
...the Ravens raced toward the crash site, listening helplessly to (Bunker's) desperate transmissions. When Bunker next came on the radio, he was out of breath. 'They're all shooting at me! I've been hit! I'm hit! I've been hit twice - God, I've been shot five times. I'm not going to make it.
When the first Raven arrived on the scene, Bunker could not be found. One of the Ravens, Chuck Engle, took his plane almost to ground level for a closer look, braving enemy fire. He did see something under a tree, but his aircraft was so badly shot up, he had to return to Long Tieng. A Skyraider pilot volunteered to look, but was met with the same withering fire as Engle had encountered. He confirmed that there was a body under a tree wearing a blood-covered survival vest.
...The growing dark made it impossible to check, and when the Ravens returned the following morning the body had been removed."
As far as I know to date, Captain Bunker's body has not been recovered, though eventually a elderly, former North Vietnamese soldier gave authorities Bunker's identification card and claimed to have helped bury the bodies of Capt Bunker and another pilot in 1970.
Other Comments:
Vietnam War/Counteroffensive Phase VI Campaign (1968-69)
From Month/Year
November / 1968
To Month/Year
February / 1969
Description This period was from February 23-June 8, 1969.
On February 23. 1969. the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese launched mortar and rocket attacks on Saigon, Da Nang, Hue. Bien Hoa Air Base, and other key targets throughout South Vietnam. In this offensive. Communist forces relied heavily on the use of stand-off fire- power in hit-and-run attacks, since, in the previous year’s offensives. Allied ground operations and air interdiction efforts had countered the Communists‘ logistical capacity to wage conventional battles. By March 30 the Allies had blunted the hit-and-run attacks. and the enemy withdrew into Cambodian and Laotian sanctuaries to restock their munitions and weapons inventories.
Later in the spring. on May 12. the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese launched a second phase. consisting of more than 200 attacks in South Vietnam, the heaviest assault since the 1968 Tet Offensive. An intense battle in the A Shau Valley required USAF close air support and tactical airlift of supplies and reinforcements until May 20, when the U.S. Army captured Ap Bia Mountain, thus enabling Allied aircraft to land in the A Shau Valley without receiving mortar fire. Another significant battle occurred at Ben Het Defense Camp, located about 260 miles northeast of Saigon, where the Cambodian/Laotian borders join the boundary of South Vietnam. Here, the USAF employed AC-47 and AC-I19 gunships at night and tactical air and B-52 strikes during the day in support of the defenders. Fighter aircraft laid down suppressive fire to permit C-7s to drop supplies to the besieged forces. By the end of June the Allies had forced the enemy's withdrawal.
Throughout this campaign, the USAF joined the Vietnamese Air Force and the other U.S. services in close air support of Allied forces throughout South Vietnam and in a continuing interdiction campaign. COMMANDO HUNT I, along South Vietnam's borders with Laos and Cambodia. In Laos Air Force pilots joined Navy aviators to hit targets along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, where North Vietnam. no longer having to protect its lines of communication and storage areas north of the demilitarized zone, had shifted more antiaircraft defenses. The USAF consequently relied heavily on high-flying B-52s and such fast tactical aircraft as F-4s and F-105: for most missions over the trail. AC-130 gunships, though flying less than 4 percent of the missions in Laos, nevertheless accounted in the spring of 1969 for 44 percent of the trucks claimed damaged or destroyed.
In northeastern Laos AC-47 gunships provided close air support to Royal Laotian and irregular forces battling North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops. On March 2. 1969. the Royal Laotian forces abandoned Na Khang under cover of USAF aircraft. Then on the 12th the USAF deployed AC-47s to Udorn, a Royal Thai Air Force Base 40 miles south of Vientiane, Laos, to defend forward Royal Laotian air bases. The USAF and the Royal Laotian Air Force on March 23 began a new Laotian counteroffensive with air attacks on targets in the Xiangkhoang area of the Plain of Jars, 100 miles northeast of Vientiane. Two weeks later, on April 7, Laotian troops entered Xiangkhoang virtually unopposed. With Laotian positions temporarily safe. the USAF AC-47s returned to South Vietnam on June 9.
American involvement in Southeast Asia expanded on March 18. 1969, when the United States began B-52 night attacks on Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia. About the same time, however, the U.S. began to reequip South Vietnam's forces in preparation for eventual withdrawal of all American forces. On April 19 the U.S. transferred to the VNAF its first jet aircraft. Shortly afterwards, on June 8, President Richard M. Nixon announced that during July and August 1969 the United States would withdraw 25.000 of its 540,000 troops in South Vietnam, even though no progress had been made in the Paris peace talks.