BOUCHARD-MICHAEL

MISSING  IN  ACTION

 

Michael Lora Bouchard was born on November 1, 1938, in Missoula, Montana.  He attended Bonner Elementary School and then Missoula High School, graduating about 1956.  After high school he married and had four children.  He joined the Navy from Missoula, became a pilot and is known to have been stationed aboard the USS MIDWAY in 1962 as a LTJG.  By 1966 he was divorced.  In 1968 he was attached to Attack Squadron 196 deployed on board USS CONSTELLATION.  On the night of 19-20 December 1968, then LT Bouchard was the pilot of a Grumman Attack Aircraft Intruder and the Navy later released the following about his mission.

 

“Lt Michael L. Bouchard, pilot, and LT Robert W. Colyar, bombardier-navigator, launched from USS CONSTELLATION in A-6A BuNo 154152 for a strike mission in Laos.  Upon arrival in the area they were assigned to a Forward Air Controller working a truck park on the Ho Chi Minh Trail near the village of Ban Tanook, about 20 miles southwest of the A Shau Valley.  Bouchard was to make visual dive-bombing runs by the light of parachute flares.  Once cleared by the FAC, he rolled in but as his aircraft was passing through 5500 feet and at an airspeed of about 500 knots the A-6 was hit by AAA fire, separating the starboard wing from the fuselage.  Other aircrew in the area saw only one parachute, which turned out to be Colyar’s.  Once on the ground, Colyar spent about 30 minutes searching for Bouchard but then was forced to leave the area to avoid capture. He was picked up the next day by an Air Force helicopter.  LT Bouchard was classed as Missing in Action and was carried in that status until 26 November 1973 when the Secretary of the Navy approved a Presumptive Finding of Death.  He was promoted to Lieutenant Commander while MIA.  LCDR Bouchard’s remains have not been repatriated.”

 

Sometime after the incident the USAF published information that a picture of POWs held in North Vietnam included an individual tentatively identified as LT Bouchard.  Subsequently, the USAF issued a retraction advising that the true identity of the individual in the picture revealed he was not LT Bouchard.  His name is inscribed on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii.

 

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)