CHAMBERS, CARL DENNIS

07/13/2025 - RIP

Name: Carl Dennis Chambers
Rank/Branch: United States Air Force/O2
Unit: 559 TFS
Date of Birth: 07 March 1941
Home City of Record: Pacific Palisades CA
Date of Loss: 07 August 1967
Country of Loss: North Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 171900 North  1083800 East
Status (in 1973): Returnee
Category:
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: F4C
Missions:
Other Personnel in Incident: Capt. Glenn Wilson, returnee
Refno:

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. 2025

REMARKS: 730314 RELEASED BY DRV

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January 1997  - Update provided by Dennis Chambers.

After life in the Air Force, in the summer of 1973, I joined Eastern
Airlines, and flew  the right seat of a Lockheed Electra on the shuttle run
out of New York. This experience proved to me that flying big airplanes
probably wasn't something I was going to enjoy for the long haul. After the
Arab oil embargo, and being laid off, we moved back to California.

There I took the advice of David Carey and some other roommates that a career
in  sales was my best area of focus. One of the things David suggested was to
call his future father-in-law and talk about commercial real estate. I also
talked to several college friends in commercial real estate, and found that
it seemed to be a good match.

After seven years at Coldwell Banker, a friend and I left to join a firm
called CPS (Commercial Property Services). We've been here since 1981, and
have had some good times and then some bad times, and now we're starting to
have some good times again.

On a personal note, my wife Heather and I bought one of those "fixer-uppers"
down on the Carmel coast, and spend our weekends down there. We have a small
condo with the business attire here in San Jose. We go down for long
weekends, and come up Monday morning. It's worked out very well, something
we should have done a long time ago.

May 1997

CC:   Here is another NVN attempted escape story to add to your
collection.  MM

MM, you've got a great memory. Yes, Glen Wilson and I were able to escape
from a bunker about 50 miles north of the DMZ approximately a week and a
half after we were shot down. We got out late one night when the guards were
goofing around, made our way to the beach, and keeping a long story short,
were able to steal a couple boats. They were both very small boats made of
carved out logs, and therefore were incredibly heavy. Both boats,
unfortunately for us, sunk the minute we got them into the water, which
indicates they were water-logged. There wasn't much we could do about it.

By that time it was late morning, we were exhausted and tried to find a
place to hide for the day. We thought we'd try again that next night. We
could see them looking for us. They missed us the first pass, and then
someone saw some footprints in the wet sand. As you know, sand does have a
tendency to show where you've been if it's rained. It had rained, and our
footprints were rather obvious. The sand was so wet we couldn't cover our
tracks. I don't need to go into description as to how mad they were when our
original guards showed up to take us back. The rest was standard operating
procedure as far as getting to Hanoi.

There's a lot more detail into how we escaped and how we found the boats,
but I don't think it's of much interest to anybody. Hope this helps you.

Sincerely,

Dennis Chambers

07/17/2025

CC: from Jerry Gerndt via Larry Frieze...

Gentlemen:

I have sad news to report, C. Dennis Chambers passed away
this past Sunday. 

It was very unexpected. He was hospitalized for a pain in his
back and it was a fungal infection. The doctors thought they
had it under control when things went south and he had an
embolism. ...

Dennis Chambers Veteran Tribute