Remains of Airman Killed in Vietnam War Attack on Secret CIA Radar Base in Laos Identified

The remains of an Air Force sergeant who died defending a top-secret radar site on a mountaintop in Laos during the Vietnam War have been identified and located, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency announced this week.

Sgt. David S. Price, 26, of Centralia, Washington, who died in 1968, was stationed at Lima Site 85 -- a highly covert tactical air navigation radar site on the remote, nearly 6,000-foot high mountain peak known as Phou Pha Thi in Houaphan Province, Laos, the agency said in a news release. He and 18 other men were there working on a top-secret Air Force and CIA mission code-named "Project Heavy Green," according to the Department of Defense, which provided support with a TSQ-81 radar nicknamed COMMANDO CLUB for U.S. bombing runs in North Vietnam.

But the site eventually was seen as a valued target by the North Vietnamese Army and from March 10-11, 1968, the site was bombarded by artillery and commandos and was seized from the small team of radar technicians. While eight of the men were rescued, 11 of them, including Price, died.

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A passage from the CIA-published "Studies in Intelligence" quarterly journal detailed that, in the days that followed, bombing runs were ordered on the site to cover up the covert operation, further complicating the retrieval of any American remains.

"By midday, hopes of recovering the missing Americans were discarded and attention turned to destroying the radar to prevent it from falling into the hands of the North Vietnamese, along with the documentation and operational information that was left in the COMMANDO CLUB operations building," the journal detailed. "Between the 12th and 18th, 95 sorties were directed to destroy the radar; and on the 19th, two A-I Sandys leveled every building on the ridge. This aerial barrage had the collateral effect of probably obliterating the remains of any Americans who were left on the mountain."

Due to the secrecy behind the operation, many of the family members were left in the dark about the airmen's whereabouts. A news clipping from March 1970 referenced the shock and surprise of Price's mother after she read about the attack in the national press two years after his death. She had been informed by the Pentagon only that her son was declared dead after he had gone missing in an unnamed Southeast Asian country.

"Now, I know what he was referring to in some of his letters," Price's mother was quoted as saying in the article. "This is definitely where he was."

Decades later, in 1994, the then-Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command tried to search for remains but was unsuccessful. A successful finding of remains at the site happened in 2003, leading to further investigation.

In 2023, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency "discovered unexploded ordnance, incident-related materials, possible material evidence, and possible osseous [or bone] remains from the research site," the agency said in a press release.

To identify Price's remains, the agency used circumstantial evidence and mitochondrial DNA analysis.

His funeral will take place in his hometown of Centralia, Washington, on Aug. 30, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Eight of the 11 men Price died alongside still remain unaccounted for, according to the agency's records.

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