James B. McGovern Jr. (4 February 1922-6 May 1954) was a US Air Force fighter pilot during World War II and later a CIA operative who was one of two American pilots killed at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
Biography[]
James B. McGovern Jr. was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1922, and he joined the US Air Force in May 1942. He shot down four Japanese aircraft in the air and destroyed five on the ground in China during World War II. After the war, he became a CIA aviator, and he was imprisoned by communist China from 4 January to May 1950 after crash-landing in Guangxi on 5 Deecember 1949. In 1954, he was sent to drop supplies to the French garrison besieged by the Viet Minh at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu on the Vietnam-Laos border, but he was shot down and crashed in Laos. McGovern, fellow American Wallace Buford, and two French crewmen were killed, and McGovern was buried at an unmarked grave in Laos; his grave was discovered in 2002, and his death was declassified in 2004.