T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Air Force veteran Joe Latham holds his flight log of bombing missions during the Vietnam War and a MiG replica he was gifted during a reunion event decades later at his home in Marshalltown. Latham once flew the F-4 Phantom fighter jet that is now displayed at the American Legion property on South 6th Street.

Since it arrived in Marshalltown and was placed at its current location along South 6th Street at the American Legion property over three decades ago, the F-4 Phantom Fighter Jet has served as a tribute to all Iowa veterans, according to local REALTOR ® Jeff Heiden, a National Guard and Air National Guard veteran himself who led the fundraising efforts to bring it here. But it also has an especially meaningful connection to one Marshalltown Vietnam veteran, Joe Latham, who flew that exact jet on a bombing mission over North Vietnam in the late 1960s.

Latham, 85, an Eagle Grove native and Air Force veteran, is a retired lawyer who flew a total of 101 bombing missions in North Vietnam over a two-year period beginning in 1966 — including 69 backseat landings — and served alongside Joe Crecca, who lived in captivity for six years after being shot down and taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA).

“I still drive downtown almost every day and drive past (the jet),” Latham said. “It just kind of reminds me of the best part of my life.”

Even at his current age, Latham still possesses remarkably vivid memories of the missions he flew right down to the locations, how long they took, what time of day they occurred, which bombs were dropped and seeing the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi from the air, albeit briefly. And for Heiden, the at times difficult effort to bring the jet to Marshalltown as the Wright-Patterson Air Force was letting more aircraft out to serve as static displays around the country — he had read an article about it in the Smithsonian Air and Space Magazine — has been worth it to encourage younger people to converse with veterans in their families about their service.

“I just wanted to bring attention to the military arena with something big and exciting,” Heiden said.

The initiative came about entirely through private fundraising, and it was during a Rotary Club meeting after the effort began that the connection was made because Latham kept a flight log with the serial number of every jet he had ever flown, a book he still keeps at home to this day. The mission he flew with the jet now in Marshalltown involved a 3 ½ hour flight protecting a C-130 off the coast of Haiphong over the Gulf of Tonkin.

Latham earned a Silver Star, a Distinguished Flying Cross and 11 air medals for his service. During a reunion banquet decades later, he even had the honor of meeting the NVA MiG-21 pilot he had once shot down.

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Contact Robert Maharry

at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or

rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.