Why aren't the names of these 74 sailors on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall?
Almost as soon as The Wall went up, families came to Washington to find their sailor’s name.
They’d find Panel 23, a black granite slab of the Vietnam War Memorial — widely called The Wall — that held the names of Americans killed in the conflict in June 1969.
And time after time, family after family, shipmate after shipmate, the names weren’t there.
How could that be? When the USS Frank E. Evans sank in the South China Sea in June 1969, it was one of the deadliest single events for U.S. service members during the entire Vietnam War. Struck by the bow of an Australian aircraft carrier, the American destroyer split in two. The bow of the Evans — with the bridge and much of the berthing quarters, where crew were asleep — sank in nine minutes.
The disaster killed 74, including 3 brothers who were serving together on the warship, and the son of the ship’s senior chief.
Since World War II, only three other Navy disasters have killed more sailors than the sinking of the Frank E. Evans: a 1952 collision that sank the USS Hobson, and the 1963 and 1968 losses of the submarines USS Thresher and USS Scorpion.
Of those, only the Frank E. Evans was lost at war.
Except on June 3, 1969, the Frank E. Evans wasn’t “at war,” Navy and defense officials quickly decided.
https://taskandpurpose.com/history/uss-frank-e-evans-vietnam-war-wall/