Returning from leave in Laos, 30-year-old Malcolm ‘Mac’ Riding was on board an Air Vietnam DC4 when it crashed 25 km from his Red Cross team’s compound near Pleiku, South Vietnam.
The plane crashed in territory controlled by North Vietnamese forces, which made it difficult for investigators to get to the crash site or determine the cause. Eyewitnesses had seen the plane trailing smoke and attempting to land at an airstrip before it pulled up and then crashed. Subsequent reports indicated that it had been struck by a heat-seeking missile. Riding’s body was never found.
British-born but New Zealand-educated, Riding was an optical engineer and former relieving lighthouse keeper who had spent time in the Peruvian Andes and Antarctica. He arrived in South Vietnam with the Red Cross in 1973 and became leader of the organisation’s sixth welfare team in September 1974. In 2003 Malcolm Riding was awarded the New Zealand Operational Service Medal for his services to the Red Cross.