Mar. 27, 1964 - Two American airmen were reported missing today on a reconnaissance flight over South Vietnam.
A third United States pilot died Wednesday of injuries suffered when his plane was shot down by a Cambodian fighter last Thursday, it was announced in Saigon.
A U.S. military spokesman said the missing plane, a single-engine L-10, disappeared yesterday over the northern highlands and may have gone down in the dense rain forest which covers the area. An air search has been started.
The death of Air Force First Lieut. Uwe-Thorsten Scobel (pictured), 27 years old, of Honolulu, in a military hospital in the Philippines raised to 203 the number of Americans who have died in South Vietnam’s war against the Communist Viet Cong guerrillas.
Scobel was a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Germany. His L-19 was shot down in South Vietnam by a Cambodian fighter jet piloted by Prince Monirak, the son of the chief of state, Prince Norodom Dihanouk, on March 19 during a South Vietnamese attack on the border village of Chantrea. Monirak was at the controls of a T-28 fighter supplied to Cambodia by the U.S. Scobel was directing Vietnamese air strikes against Chantrea.
