Bryan Knight was five years old when he last saw his father, Captain Roy Knight, a pilot of the United States Air Force, in January 1967 at the Dallas airport in Texas.
His father’s plane was shot down four months later during a combat mission on the Ho Chi Minh route, in Laos, during the Vietnam War. His remains were recently found and identified, RFI publishes.
Fifty years later, Bryan Knight, captain of the Southwest Airlines company, piloted the plane that brought the coffin with the remains of his father wrapped in the US flag to the same airport, Dallas Love.
“I am very honored and very excited to be able to bring my father back home,” Bryan Knight said in a video posted by Southwest.
Southwest and airport employees lined up on the airport runway when the coffin with the soldier’s remains descended from the plane.
Roy Knight was 36 years old when his fighter collapsed in northern Laos on May 19, 1967, after being hit by shots from the air defense.
This year, a team composed of Americans and Laotians found in the place the remains of a person who was later identified as Major Knight thanks to his dental pieces, said the US agency that deals with missing soldiers, dependent on the Pentagon.
After being promoted to colonel posthumously, Roy Knight was buried this Saturday with military honors in Weatherford, Texas.
Source: Preferente
