Airmen’s Remains From Laos to Be Buried

Bone fragments that scientists determined are the remains of six U.S. servicemen whose plane crashed in Laos during the Vietnam War will be buried as a group Friday at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The fragments, recovered by a joint U.S.-Laotian excavation team in 1995, were too small for positive identification. However, forensic anthropologists concluded after extensive study of the fragments and other evidence that the bones were from all six men.

Larger remains recovered from the crash site in 1995 were positively identified in April 2003 as those of Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Luther L. Rose of Howe, Texas, who was the aerial gunner aboard the AC-47, a World War II-era cargo plane converted into a gunship. Rose’s remains were buried last summer.

The others, also Air Force personnel, were identified as: Col. Theodore E. Kryszak of Buffalo, N.Y.; Col. Harding E. Smith of Los Gatos, Calif.; Lt. Col. Russell D. Martin of Bloomfield, Iowa; Chief Master Sgt. Ervin Warren of Philadelphia; and Chief Master Sgt. Harold E. Mullins of Denver.

Their plane went down June 3, 1966, during a nighttime reconnaissance mission over southern Laos, where U.S. forces were secretly engaged in combat to disrupt Communist Laotian and North Vietnamese forces.

The six were members of the 4th Air Commando Squadron, which was based in Nha Trang, South Vietnam, but maintained a detachment at Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand to fly interdiction missions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.