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Jack Shoop was part of the following incident during which he was killed:
MISADVENTURE (FRIENDLY FIRE) - On November 19, 1967, during the Battle of
Dak To, one of the worst friendly fire incidents of the Vietnam War occurred
when a Marine Corps fighter-bomber dropped two bombs into the perimeter where
officers and noncommissioned officers of 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry had set
up a command post with their radio operators. The soldiers of the 173rd
Airborne Brigade were dug in on the steep southern slope of Hill 875, fighting
beside napalm fires and exposed to the guns of North Vietnamese Army shooting
from tunnels nearby. Just past dusk, after making three dry runs over the
battlefield, the Marine Corps A-4 attack jet descended to 1,000 feet above the
jungle and released two 250-pound Mk-81 bombs fitted with Snakeye fins.
Barreling in at a shallow 10-degree angle at hundreds of miles per hour, the two
bombs from the A-4 hit the ground. One was a dud. The other exploded in a huge
orange fireball. Instead of hitting the North Vietnamese, the bomb struck the
branches of a lone tree along the Americans’ perimeter, under which the battalion
had set up their command post. It was also a casualty-collection point where the
most badly wounded soldiers were being treated by medics while awaiting medevac
helicopters to take them off the hill. The bomb killed 21 men and wounded 10 more,
including most of the remaining senior leaders and medics. A single radio operator
was spared when he was protected by a pile of broken tree trunks that absorbed
deadly fragments.
The dead included MAJ Charles Watters, a 40-year-old Catholic priest who served as
the battalion’s chaplain. Earlier in the battle, Watters had ventured out past
the perimeter several times to rescue wounded soldiers, carrying or dragging them
to safety, providing first aid, and administering last rites to the dying—actions
for which he was later awarded the Medal of Honor. After witnessing what happened
below, a crewman on a U.S. Air Force AC-47 “Spooky” gunship flying in a slow
circle 3,000 feet above the dead and wounded troops tossed parachute flares out
the back of the plane to help survivors on the ground see in the darkness.
The lost Americans included:
PFC Mario A. Cisneros
SP4 Gary R. Cooper
SP4 Gerald L. George Jr.
SP4 Mark R. Hering
SP4 Thomas P. Huddleston
PVT Roger A. Kros
PFC Robert C. Lavallee Jr.
SP4 Andrew J. Orosz
PFC William A. Ross
SP4 Robert J. Sanders
SP4 Jack H. Shoop Jr.
SP4 Lewis B. Smith
PFC James R. Speller
SP4 Harry E. Stephens
1LT Richard W. Thompson
PFC Richard Walker Jr.
MAJ Charles J. Watters
SSG Remer G. Williams
The remains of three Skysoldiers have never been found:
SP4 Jack L. Croxdale II
PFC Benjamin D. DeHerrera
SGT Donald Iandoli
A January 1968 U.S. Air Force investigation into the incident was inconclusive,
declaring that “there is insufficient evidence to determine the exact cause of
the short round” before blaming “improper release conditions.” The investigator
recommended that pilots undergo remedial training and that the investigation be
closed, as it had revealed “no gross personnel errors nor evidence of equipment
malfunction.”
[Taken from coffeltdatabase.org and “The Secret History of a Vietnam War
Airstrike Gone Terribly Wrong” by John Ismay, nytimes.com, January 2019]
