Name: Jack C. Rittichier

Branch/Rank: US Coast Guard/O3

Unit: CG 37 ARRS

Date of Birth: 17 August 1933

Home City of Record: BARBERTON OH

Date of Loss: 09 June 1968

Country of Loss: South Vietnam

Loss Coordinates: 162144 North 1070534 East

Status (in 1973): Killed In Action/Body Not Recovered

Category: 3

Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: HU3E #6714710

Missions:

Other Personnel in Incident: Elmer Holden, James Locker, Richard Yeend,

all KIA/BNR

Refno: 1206

Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw

data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA

families, published sources, interviews and CACCF = Combined Action

Combat Casualty File.

REMARKS:

R/R CONTACT LOST OVER WATER - SAR NEG

Border Laos, Thuan Thien 22 miles NW of A Shau

ATTEMPT RESCUE DOWNED PILOT, GROUND FIRE, EXPLD/BURN

---------

nov14.98

Air Force Looks for Missing Copter

The Associated Press

HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. (AP) -- The Air Force is hoping flight simulations can

help solve the disappearance 30 years ago of a rescue helicopter in Vietnam.

The project may lead to similar efforts to find other aircraft that vanished

during the Vietnam War, former flight engineer Bob Baldwin said Wednesday as

the nation marked Veterans Day.

Baldwin is part of a team of veterans teaming up with the Air Force to find

an

HH-3E Jolly Green Giant and its four-man crew. The helicopter named Jolly

Green 23 vanished June 9, 1968, while searching for a downed attack pilot,

who

also remains unaccounted for.

Baldwin was part of the wartime effort to find the helicopter. Thirty years

later, he's helping with a new search despite being thousands of miles away

from the scene.

Black and white aerial photos taken in the late 1960s were converted into

digital photos and matched with current maps to recreate the wartime

landscape

near the Vietnam-Laos border. Baldwin then used a computer joy stick to fly

through the scene displayed on a console.

``I just closed my eyes and when I opened them up, it was like stepping back

30 years,'' Baldwin said. ``The only thing missing is that the tracers

aren't

coming at you'' from antiaircraft guns.

The simulations at the Hurlburt base in the Florida Panhandle allowed

Baldwin

and another former pilot to pick out three spots where the helicopter may

have

crashed.

A military team in Vietnam searched for four days before the monsoon season

forced them to stop. They plan to resume when the rains end next year, said

Maj. Mike Vaughn, who helps supervise computer mapping and flight simulator

work at Hurlburt.

The team found no sign of Jolly Green 23, but did find wreckage of a Marine

helicopter that had been forced down. All but one of the crew members had

escaped.