Karger, Barry Edwin, LTJG

                      

VA-93 Squadron Photo, January 1968, San Diego. Arrow points to LTJG Karger. "On May 14, 1968, Lieutenant Barry Karger was assigned a strike mission over Quang Binh province, North Vietnam in A-4F Skyhawk BuNo. 154198, side number NF 304. During this mission something terrible went wrong and Lieutenant Karger did not return to Bon Homme Richard." 

 

From top to bottom CDR Bob Wilson, LTJG Sam Schneider, LCDR Mike Trout, and LTJG Barry Karger.   Photo from the 1968 cruise book.

On January 3, 1994, Joint Task Force–Full Accounting (JTF-FA) identified the remains of Lieutenant Junior Grade Barry Edwin Karger, missing from the Vietnam War.

Lieutenant Junior Grade Karger entered the U.S.Navy from California and was a member of Attack Squadron 93, Carrier Air Wing 5. On May 14, 1968, he piloted an A-4F Skyhawk (bureau number 154198, call sign "Raven 304") that launched from the USS Bon Homme Richard (CVA-31) on a strike mission over enemy targets in Quang Binh Province, North Vietnam. During the mission, the aircraft was shot down by enemy fire and crashed in the Cau Rang River. LTJG Karger was killed in the crash and his remains could not be recovered at the time due to enemy presence in the area. In 1993, the Vietnamese government repatriated human remains to the U.S. that were eventually identified as those of LTJG Karger. 

Lieutenant Junior Grade Karger is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. 

Vietnam Wall Panel coords 60E 013

          VA-93, CVW-5, USS BON HOMME RICHARD

USS Bon Homme Richard (CV/A-31), the second United States Navy ship of that name, was named in honor of John Paul Jones' famous frigate, usually rendered in more correct French as Bonhomme Richard, to honor Benjamin Franklin, the American Commissioner at Paris whose almanac, Poor Richard's Almanac had been published in France under the title Les Maximes du Bonhomme Richard. As her sister Essex-class ship the Franklin was also named in honor of Benjamin Franklin, he was therefore the only person ever to have two commissioned US Navy warships named in his honor at the same time.