HOLDEN, ELMER LARRY Remains recovered 09/2003 - see note below
Name: Elmer Larry Holden Branch/Rank: United States Air Force/E5 Unit: 37 AERO R&R SQ Date of Birth: 19 February 1944 Home City of Record: OKLAHOMA CITY OK Date of Loss: 09 June 1968 Country of Loss: South Vietnam Loss Coordinates: 162144 North 1070534 East Status (in 1973): Killed In Action/Body Not Recovered Category: 3 Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: HU3E Missions: Refno: 1206 Other Personnel in Incident: James Locker, Jack Rittichtier, Richard Yeend, all KIA/BNR
Source: Compiled by P.O.W. NETWORK from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews and CACCF = Combined Action Combat Casualty File. Updated 2003.
REMARKS: RADIO CONTACT LOST OVER WATER SAR NEG
Border Laos, Thua Thien 22 miles NW of A Shau
CACCF/CRASH/AIRCREW/6 YRS United States Air Force/QUANG TRI
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Air Force Looks for Missing Copter The Associated Press
HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. (AP) -- The Air Force is hoping flight simulations can help solve the disappearance 30 years ago of a rescue helicopter in Vietnam.
The project may lead to similar efforts to find other aircraft that vanished during the Vietnam War, former flight engineer Bob Baldwin said Wednesday as the nation marked Veterans Day.
Baldwin is part of a team of veterans teaming up with the Air Force to find an HH-3E Jolly Green Giant and its four-man crew. The helicopter named Jolly Green 23 vanished June 9, 1968, while searching for a downed attack pilot, who also remains unaccounted for.
Baldwin was part of the wartime effort to find the helicopter. Thirty years later, he's helping with a new search despite being thousands of miles away from the scene.
Black and white aerial photos taken in the late 1960s were converted into digital photos and matched with current maps to recreate the wartime landscape near the Vietnam-Laos border. Baldwin then used a computer joy stick to fly through the scene displayed on a console.
``I just closed my eyes and when I opened them up, it was like stepping back 30 years,'' Baldwin said. ``The only thing missing is that the tracers aren't coming at you'' from antiaircraft guns.
The simulations at the Hurlburt base in the Florida Panhandle allowed Baldwin and another former pilot to pick out three spots where the helicopter may have crashed.
A military team in Vietnam searched for four days before the monsoon season forced them to stop. They plan to resume when the rains end next year, said Maj. Mike Vaughn, who helps supervise computer mapping and flight simulator work at Hurlburt.
The team found no sign of Jolly Green 23, but did find wreckage of a Marine helicopter that had been forced down. All but one of the crew members had escaped.
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Coast Guard pilot's body recovered from Laos Molly Kavanaugh; Plain Dealer Reporter
In the months following the June 9, 1968, helicopter crash in the jungles of Laos, Carol Rittichier held onto hope her husband was still alive.
The two met at Kent State University and within two months became engaged. After 11 years of marriage, they told people they were still on their honeymoon.
Lt. Jack Rittichier, a pilot with the Coast Guard, had arrived in Vietnam just two months before the crash. "I just want to save lives as much as I can," the 34-year-old Barberton native wrote his wife.
And that is what he was trying to do that summer morning. As he swung the "Jolly Green Giant" helicopter near the downed attack pilot, enemy fire came at him until finally his HH-3E chopper tumbled to the ground and exploded.
Rittichier's body and those of his three crew members were never found.
His wife, now remarried and living in California, said she had assumed that people had quit looking for him and that he would never be found.
Yesterday she was overjoyed to find out she was wrong. "I can't believe he was not forgotten," the 65-year-old woman said.
On Friday remains recovered from the crash site will be brought to Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu. Positive identification cannot be made for several months, but forensic testing is expected to confirm the remains belong to Rittichier and the three Air Force men, said Petty Officer Lauren Smith, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.
The crew were Capt. Richard C. Yeend, 29, of Mobile, Ala.; Sgt. James D. Locker, 21, of Sidney, Ohio; and Staff Sgt. Elmer L. Holden, 24, of Oklahoma City, Okla.
"They are almost 100 percent sure this is indeed the site," said Smith, who visited the remote area last month to photograph the excavation for the Coast Guard.
The crash site, a six-hour drive plus a 90-minute helicopter ride from Vientiane, the capital of Lao People's Democratic Republic, was discovered in November.
In addition to remains and helicopter pieces, search and recovery teams have found some personal effects. They include a pocketknife, part of a watch, a boot sole and a bar ensign which probably belonged to either Capt. Yeend or Lt. Rittichier.
The 23-year-old Smith said people working at the site, some of them locals, know this mission was important. "These are remains that have been waiting for a long time to come home," Smith said.
Rittichier's widow, now Carol Wypick, said his death was hard to accept. "When it happened, I just wanted to die," she said. "I couldn't believe someone so cool, so wonderful, was taken."
The oldest of three boys, Rittichier had many talents, she said. He majored in art, loved to write, was captain of the football team and was a great dancer.
The two did not plan to have children because their lives felt so complete together, she said. After graduating from Kent, Rittichier joined the Air Force but eventually decided that being a bomber pilot was not for him.
He wanted to be a helicopter traffic reporter, but those jobs were scarce. So he joined the Coast Guard to fly search and rescue missions. The couple moved near the Coast Guard station at Selfridge Air Force Base in Mount Clemens, Mich., where a hangar now bears his name.
When he got the chance to go to Vietnam for a year as an exchange pilot, Rittichier signed up, then told his wife. He wanted to write a book about the war and figured he'd better see action firsthand.
His letters and the tapes he sent home spoke of uncertainty over the war and concern for the Vietnamese. He was the first Coast Guard combat casualty and the only Coast Guard member missing in action from the Vietnam War.
"His mother and I used to say, he's not dead, he's running around in the jungle," Wypick said.
Rittichier's parents are now deceased. But over time, as the years But over time, as the years multiplied, all of them knew in their heart he was gone, Wypick said. And so they prayed for this day, the day his remains would be found.
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The US Government has found Jolly Green 23 and recovered the remains of Lt Rittichier, USCG, Capt Yeend, USAF, SSgt Holden, USAF, and Sgt Locker, USAF.
LT Rittichier will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery on 6 Oct at 1300. The funeral service will be held at the Old Post Chapel, FT Myer, VA.
The funeral is open to the public. However, I need to know who is coming so I can plan for the reception.
Can you spread this word to your POW-MIA Community? If anyone wants to attend the funeral could they please contact me at 202-267-4009 or E-mail at jbrewster@comdt.uscg.mil
Thank you
VR
LCDR James Brewster, USCGR 202-267-4009 (v) 202-267-4823 (f)
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The State (Columbia, SC) Thursday, October 9, 2003
Vietnam War casualty to be buried Saturday By CHUCK CRUMBO
Air Force Staff Sgt. Elmer "Larry" Holden will be buried Saturday, 35 years after he died in the Vietnam War. Holden, a flight engineer assigned to the 37th Air Rescue and Recovery Squadron at Da Nang, Vietnam, died with three other crewmen when his helicopter was shot down while searching for a missing U.S. pilot near Hue.
The Oklahoma native will be buried in Hampton County because it's the home of his widow, Judy A. Holden Freeman, and two daughters Stephanie H. DeLoach and Tina H. Joyner.
A graveside service with full military honors will be at 2 p.m. Saturday at Johnson/St. Paul Cemetery in Hampton.Visitation will be at the Peeples-Rhoden Funeral home from 10 a.m-1 p.m. Saturday.
Pentagon reports said Holden's HH-3E "Jolly Green Giant" helicopter exploded in a huge fireball after being struck by enemy fire on June 9, 1968.
U.S. soldiers tried to reach the crash site in Laos, just across the Vietnamese border. Each time, they were driven back by North Vietnamese units. An aerial search indicated there were no survivors and the Pentagon listed the crew as & #8220;Killed In Action/Body Not Recovered."
Over the years, joint U.S.-Vietnamese teams have made several attempts to recover the crew's bodies after receiving information from Southeast Asian refugees headed to the United States.
In May 2002, a recovery team working in Laos learned about a crash site near Ban Kaboui, Laos, nine miles from the spot where Holden's chopper reportedly went down.
Earlier this year, a U.S. Army team excavated the site and recovered human remains. Those remains were identified in September.
Also killed were the pilot, Coast Guard Lt. Jack C. Rittichier of Barberton, Ohio; the co-pilot, Air Force Capt. Richard Yeend Jr. of Mobile, Ala.; and Air Force Sgt. James Locker, of Sidney, Ohio.
Holden, 34 when he died, had served in the Air Force for seven years and had been stationed in Vietnam for nine months. His honors included a Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and Purple Heart. Family members were presented with the POW/MIA Medal by the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., in 1983.