HONORED ON PANEL 1W, LINE 74 OF THE WALL
DWIGHT WILLIAM COOK
WALL NAME
DWIGHT W COOK
PANEL / LINE
1W/74
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DATE OF CASUALTY
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LEFT FOR DWIGHT WILLIAM COOK
POSTED ON 7.8.2016
POSTED BY: Dennis Wriston
I'm proud of our Vietnam Veterans
First Lieutenant Dwight William Cook, Served with the 555th Tactical Fighter Squadron, 432nd Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, 7th Air Force.
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POSTED ON 7.24.2015
POSTED BY: [email protected]
Final Mission of 1LT Dwight W. Cook
MAJ Roger W. Carroll Jr. was born in Dallas, TX and moved to Kansas City, Missouri when he was six years old. The oldest child, Roger was very fond of his younger sister and brother. He was raised in a Christian home, was an honor student, and active in sports. Roger knew from an early age that he wanted to be a pilot. Roger entered the University of Kansas to study aviation engineering. While at KU, Roger joined the Air Force and became a navigator on B-47 and B-52 aircraft. Wanting to be a pilot still, Roger took pilot training and earned his wings flying T-38 and F-100 aircraft. After one tour in Vietnam, Roger returned to the States to train other young pilots until he again took training himself, this time on the F-4 Phantom fighter/bomber jet. His second tour of Vietnam began in early 1972. He told his parents, "If anything ever happens to me, don't come looking for me. You won't find me. The aircraft is such a bomb that if one hits the ground or something hits it, it just explodes." MAJ Carroll was assistant to the commander, and did not ordinarily fly combat missions, but begged for the chance to fly, and was allowed to fly twice-weekly missions. On September 21, 1972, Carroll was sent on a mission over the strategic Plain of Jars region in Laos. His weapons/systems officer was 1LT Dwight W. Cook, a young Air Force officer. The Plain of Jars region of Laos had for years been an intense area of struggle between the communist Pathet Lao and the Royal Lao armed forces. Millions of U.S. dollars had been secretly committed to the strengthening of anti-communist strongholds in the Plain of Jars for some years. About one year before Carroll and Cook were shot down in this area, Nixon's secret campaign in Laos had become public. The area had been defended with the help of U.S. aircraft; the anti-communist troops, primarily a secret CIA-directed force comprised of some 30,000 indigenous tribesmen, were, in part, kept resupplied by CIA. Because Laos was "neutral" under the terms of the Geneva Convention, and because the U.S. continually stated they were not at war with Laos (although we were regularly bombing North Vietnamese traffic along the border and conducted assaults against communist strongholds throughout the country at the behest of the anti-communist government of Laos), and did not recognize the Pathet Lao as a government entity, the nearly 600 Americans lost in Laos were never recovered. During the mission, Carroll's aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed. Roger's prediction was correct. The largest piece of aircraft remaining was no larger than three feet across. A week after the aircraft crashed, a search party found several pieces of flight clothing and a human hip socket at the site. They found identification that belonged to Cook, but it was evident that the enemy had reached the plane first. Carroll and Cook were classified as having "died in captivity." In June 1994 remains were returned to the U.S. that were positively identified as those of MAJ Carroll and 1LT Cook in October 1995. [Taken from pownetwork.org]
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POSTED ON 2.10.2011
POSTED BY: Robert Sage
We Remember
Dwight is buried at Center Point Cemetery, Center Point, Linn County,IA.
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