David M. Brown
David McDowell Brown (April 16, 1956 – February 1, 2003) was a United States Navy captain and a NASA astronaut. He died on his first spaceflight, when the Space Shuttle "Columbia" (STS-107) disintegrated during orbital reentry into the Earth's atmosphere. Brown became an astronaut in 1996, but had not served on a space mission prior to the "Columbia" disaster. Brown was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.
Brown, the 1986 recipient of the Navy Operational Flight Surgeon of the Year award, received numerous decorations including:
The symbol indicates a posthumous award.
SS Columbia Eagle incident
McKay escaped from his captors along with U.S. Army deserter Larry Humphrey and sought out the Khmer Rouge. He was officially declared missing on 4 November 1970 and has never been located by the authorities. However, Richard Linnett and Roberto Loiederman, co-authors of "The Eagle Mutiny", wrote an article, entitled "The Last Mutineer", for the February 2005 issue of "Penthouse" in which they report that remains brought back from Cambodia were positively identified as Clyde McKay's at the Central Identification Laboratory - Hawaii (CILHI), the U.S. Navy's forensic lab in Hawaii. Subsequently, the remains were cremated and the ashes were buried in the family plot in Hemet, California, where McKay had spent his youth.