MAYSEY, LARRY WAYNE
Name: Larry Wayne Maysey Rank/Branch: E4/US Air Force Unit: 37th Aerospace Rescue & Recovery Squadron, Da Nang Date of Birth: 18 May 1946 Home City of Record: Chester NJ Date of Loss: 09 November 1967 Country of Loss: Laos Loss Coordinates: 161458N 1065258E (YC012973) Status (in 1973): Killed/Body Not Recovered Category: 2 Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: HH3E Refno: 0902
Others In Incident: Joseph G. Kusick; Bruce R. Baxter; Eugene L. Clay; Ralph W. Brower (all missing); Gerald Young (rescued - awarded Congressional Medal Of Honor for action); 3 indigenous personnel with Special Forces team (rescued)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 15 June 1990 from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK 2004.
REMARKS: CRASH-5 DED; PILOT RECV-J
SYNOPSIS: On November 8, 1967, two Air Force "Jolly Greens" (#26 and #29) from the 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron were scrambled from Da Nang Air Base at 1505 hours for an emergency extraction of five surviving members of a Special Forces reconnaissance team which had suffered heavy casualties while operating deep in a denied area in Laos. The recovery effort was to be recorded by the Squadron as one of the largest and most hazardous on record.
The two Air Force helicopters were advised by forward air control to hold while three Army UH1B gunships softened the area with rockets and machine gun fire. An Air Force C130 gunship, meanwhile, provided flare support for the mission. At 1630Z, Jolly Green 29 picked up the three indigenous personnel before being driven off by hostile fire. Damaged, Jolly Green 29 left and made an emergency landing at Khe Sanh. 20 minutes later, Jolly Green 26, flown by CAPT Gerald Young, with flight crew consisting of CAPT Ralph Brower, co-pilot; SSGT Eugene Clay, flight engineer; and SGT Larry Maysey, rescue specialist; braved the ground fire to pick up Special Forces SP4 Joseph G. Kusick and MSGT Bruce R. Baxter, both wounded. The helicopter was hit by automatic weapons fire, crashed and burst into flames.
By the afternoon of November 9, a recovery team was inserted into the area and reached the crash site of the burned HH3. Because of fading light, it was impossible to inspect the wreckage at that time.
On 10 November, the wreckage was searched and 3 charred remains were found. Two of the remains had identification tags which identified them as members of the crew. The third remains had no tags, but were identified as SP4 Kusick, radio operator of the reconnaissance team, as the long antenna from his PRC-25 radio were found on his body. CAPT Young had survived and was rescued 17 hours after the crash of the aircraft.
About 34 meters downhill from the wreckage, another set of remains were found which were readily identified as MSGT Baxter from the facial features. No trace was found of the third crew member. The remains of the two crewmen and Kusick were removed from the aircraft and placed with MSGT Baxter's remains so they could be hoisted as one lift into a hovering helicopter. The identificaton tags of the crewmembers were placed with the remains. Weather conditions and enemy action would not permit helicopters to make the extraction either that day or the day following.
The remains of the crew and passengers aboard Jolly Green 26 were never recovered. Although the location of the crash is known, the bodies of the crew and recon team who died still lie on foreign soil. The five are among nearly 600 Americans lost in Laos. Not one prisoner was released from Laos, and few remains have been recovered.
While it is a great sadness to know a loved one is dead and his body is lying far from home, the greater tragedy is those known to have been prisoners of war who did not return, and those who are missing in action.
Since the war ended, "several million documents" and "over 250,000 interviews" have been reviewed relating to Americans prisoner, missing or unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. Many officials who have reviewed this largely-classified information are convinced that hundreds of Americans are still alive in captivity today.
These reports increase the agony for families who want to know what happened to their sons, fathers and brothers. If, as the U.S. Government seems to believe, all the men are dead, it's time the information was declassified so that all can understand the fates of these heroes. If, as many believe, men are still alive, it's time they were brought home to bring the war in Vietnam to an honorable end.
======================== Subject: Bio Correction Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 23:00:21 EST
Hello,
I wanted to point out a possible error in the bios you have listed for Capt Ralph Wayne Brower, SSgt Eugene Lunsford Clay, Sgt Larry Wayne Maysey, MSG Bruce Raymond Baxter, and SP4 Joseph George Kusick. All of these gentlemen were KIA during the shootdown of a USAF HH-3 Jolly Green helo on 9 Nov 1967.
The bios have a date of loss of 8 Nov 1967. The loss occurred in the early morning of 9 Nov 1967. Also, there is no mention of SSgt Clay's remains being found.
I've been researching this loss and have obtained a copy of a report from the commanding officer of Kusick and Baxter. In that report, he states that Clay's body was also found outside of the aircraft by the recovery team and identification was made by ID tags. I also have a copy of the mission report from "Crown 1", an HC-130 aircraft that was on station overhead that day. That mission report confirms that all five KIA, three crewmembers and two recon team members, were found and identified. Unfortunately, I can't find anything that specifically says that Clay's remains, like the rest of the HH-3 crew were placed with Baxter's. I can only assume that. The bottom line is that all KIA were accounted for, but not extracted from the crash site.
I appreciate what you do on your web site, and I'm just trying to share information I've obtained that will help you make it more accurate.
Jeff Nash (retired AF Master Sergeant) Elbert, CO
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The Star-Ledger Sunday, March 14, 2004
Mission aims to locate a lost hero - Air Force sergeant died in Vietnam War
KRISTEN ALLOWAY
Although it took many years, Charlotte Hoffman finally accepted that her only child was killed in a helicopter crash during a rescue mission in the Vietnam War. But what she never got over before her death three years ago - what she carried with her for more than three decades - was that the remains of her son, Air Force Sgt. Larry Maysey, were lost in a Laotian jungle.
Later this month, a military forensics team will return to the spot where Maysey's helicopter crashed on Nov. 9, 1967, in hopes of bringing him home.
"I'd like to bury him with his mother and father," said Julia Robinson of Chester, Maysey's aunt and one of his few surviving relatives. "This has been going on for almost 40 years now. When we get it out of our minds, then it all comes back."
While Maysey's family is hoping to be able to give him a proper burial, a group of his childhood friends is working to honor his memory with a statue in the center of Chester Borough.
Maysey was an Air Force pararescueman, part of a specially trained squad for search and recovery missions. He was the only Chester resident killed in the war.
"Everybody who served in Vietnam is a hero," said Marc Dean, chairman of the memorial committee. "But Larry's chest is out a little bit farther than everyone else."
The Mayseys were notified of his death almost immediately after the crash, but they did not learn the exact circumstances of what happened until many years later. In the beginning, Maysey's mother hoped he might have survived the crash and fire that killed five men.
"Then we got letters with witness accounts," said Robinson, Charlotte Hoffman's sister-in-law. "Charlotte . . . just wanted to get him home. It was important to get him back to the United States. It was a mother wanting that final proof."
She wrote numerous letters to the Air Force and Department of Defense pleading for information about the crash, and attended dozens of meetings for MIA families.
"When the war was over, people just wanted to forget about it," said the Rev. Scott Hoffman, Charlotte's stepson and a member of the memorial committee. "She wanted to make sure all of those guys who were MIA, that people didn't forget about them."
Maysey grew up in Chester Township, the only child of Charlotte and Charles Maysey. (Charlotte Maysey married widower Hank Hoffman after her first husband died.)
Larry Maysey played Little League, joined the Boy Scouts and was on the football team before graduating from West Morris Regional High School in 1965.
His good looks - he stood over 6 feet tall with dark hair and blue eyes - and easygoing manner earned him many friends, said Terry Arentowicz, a member of the memorial committee.
He enlisted in the Air Force and, after 18 months of training, was sent to Vietnam. He was 21 years old.
He had been deployed for 21 days when he flew as part of a four-man crew to the Salavan Province in Laos to pluck special forces members from the jungle.
One helicopter had already attempted the rescue and picked up three of the men before it was attacked by enemy fire and escaped.
While Maysey's helicopter hovered, he jumped out and helped the two remaining soldiers aboard. But the aircraft was strafed with automatic weapons fire and erupted into flames, according to a letter the Mayseys received three days after the failed mission.
Maysey, two crew members and the two men they attempted to rescue were killed.
Pilot Gerald Young, the only survivor of the crash, later received the Medal of Honor. Charlotte Hoffman had tried in vain for years to find Young to learn more about her son's fate, Robinson said. Young died in 1990.
In the next few weeks, a team of about 20 military and civilian anthropologists and scientists from the military's Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command are expected to return to the crash site in Laos to dig for remains.
There are 1,870 Americans missing from the Vietnam War, and groups from the Joint Command travel to Southeast Asia several times a year on recovery missions.
Last year, investigators from the command interviewed two retired special forces members who had visited the Laos site several hours after the attack.
At the time, the men had identified the bodies and wrapped them in ponchos to be removed, according to a report the Robinsons received last year from the accounting command. But heavy enemy gunfire and limited visibility prevented a recovery.
In past years, teams working at the site - a steep ravine shrouded by dense trees - have unearthed pieces of the helicopter, eyelets from shoes and parachute hooks. But they have found no remains.
"Some 35 years after being scavenged, or in a remote site, finding an awful lot left is more unusual," said Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, based in Hawaii. "The more normal case is finding bits and pieces."
This is the fourth trip to the crash scene, and Maysey's family is hopeful that it will be the last.
But regardless of whether his remains are found, the local committee is hoping to unveil a memorial in Chester next year. For the small group - some who were deployed in Vietnam, others who did not see combat - the statue is a debt owed to a childhood friend.
The committee is sending letters to all of the VFW and American Legion posts in the state asking for donations, and to high school classmates and residents of Chester Borough and Chester Township.
They are hoping to raise $150,000 to erect a statue in Maysey's likeness, surrounded by granite panels listing the veterans from both Chesters in wars from the Revolution to present day.
"I hope they get enough money to do it. It's going to be really something," said Robinson, who also is a Chester Borough councilwoman. "It's a long time coming, not just for Larry but for all the services."
For information on the Maysey memorial, call Dean at (908) 835-0623 or Arentowicz at (973) 584- 2903.