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FRUIT HEIGHTS — Fifty years after his plane was shot down in Vietnam, a Navy pilot is being honored by his Utah family members who still have unanswered questions.
Lt. Cmdr. John Ellison loved to fly and was an accomplished pilot, becoming the first in the Navy to log 2,000 flight hours on the A-6 aircraft, his brother, Ted Ellison, said Tuesday.
“He was the apple of his father’s eye,” Ted Ellison said during an interview at his Fruit Heights home.
John Ellison and his navigator, Ltjg. James Plowman, were conducting a bombing mission on March 24, 1967, over North Vietnam when their Grumman A-6A Intruder went down behind enemy lines.
Bone fragments discovered during an excavation in the 1990s tied Plowman to what was believed to be the crash site, but nothing definitive was ever found to determine whether Ellison had died in the crash or was captured, Ted Ellison’s said.
“There was talk that John was a prisoner at some point in time,” Ted Ellison said. “I think he went down with the aircraft.”
Ellison was declared “administratively dead” years after he went missing in action.
Still, Ted Ellison acknowledged other family members were not as resolved with how John Ellison may or may not have met his fate, including John’s late wife, Jean Ellison.
“She never gave up on him,” Ted Ellison said. “She felt like he would come back home.”
Ted Ellison said the loss had a monumental impact on his family. He said John Ellison’s service instilled within him a love of country, which propelled him through his own military service as well as a career in law enforcement.
Ted Ellison said rather than mourn his brother’s disappearance and presumed death, he has chosen to honor him as well as other Vietnam veterans who met similar ends.
“Lot of people that didn’t come home from that war — I just think it’s important not to forget them,” he said.
