On June 28, 1988, the Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii (CILHI, now DPAA) identified the remains of Colonel Charles Edward Blair, missing from the Vietnam War.

Colonel Blair entered the U.S. Air Force from Virginia and was a member of the 21st Tactical Air Support Squadron. On March 19, 1968, he piloted an O-1G Bird Dog (tail number 51-4899, call sign "Walt 33") that took off from Nha Trang Air Base, South Vietnam, on a visual reconnaissance mission of an area just north of the air base in Khanh Vinh Province. While on the mission, the aircraft crashed for unknown reasons, killing Col Blair. Searches for the aircraft were unsuccessful, and Col Blair's remains were not recovered at the time. In 1985, a Vietnamese source turned over human remains correlating to this loss, and in 1988 the Vietnamese government repatriated them to the U.S., where investigators were able to identify Col Blair from these remains. 

Colonel Blair is memorialized in the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

If you are a family member of this serviceman, you may contact your casualty office representative to learn more about your service member.