SMITH, HARDING EUGENE JR.
Remains returned 06/20/95, ID 04/28/03
Name: Harding Eugene Smith, Jr.
Rank/Branch: O5/US Air Force
Unit: 4th Air Commando Squadron, Ubon AF TH
Date of Birth: 11 March 1918
Home City of Record: Los Gatos CA
Date of Loss: 03 June 1966
Country of Loss: Laos
Loss Coordinates: 170400N 1055900E (XD054858)
Status (in 1973): Missing in Action
Category: 2
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: AC47
Refno: 0354
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Other Personnel in Incident: Russell D. Martin; Harold E. Mullins; Luther L.
Rose; Theodore E. Kryszak; Ervin Warren (all missing)
Source: Compiled by Homecoming II Project 15 March 1991 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 11/2004.2003.
REMARKS: WRECKAGE SITED - NO TRACE OF CREW
SYNOPSIS: Capt. Theodore E. Kryszak was the pilot of an AC47 gunship
assigned to the 4th Air Commando Squadron at Ubon Airfield, Thailand. The
aircraft, dubbed "Puff the Magic Dragon" had evolved from earlier versions
of the Douglas C47.
Puff introduced a new principle to air attack in Vietnam. Troubled by
difficulties in conducting nighttime defense, Capt. Ronald Terry of the U.S.
Air Force Aeronautical Systems Division remembered reading about flying
missionaries in Latin America who lowered baskets of supplies on a rope from
a tightly circling airplane. Throughout the series of pylon turns, the
basket remained suspended over a selected point on the ground. Could this
principle be applied to fire from automatic weapons? Tests proved it could,
and could be extremely successful.
Puff's "flare kicker" illuminated the target, then the pilot used a mark on
the window to his left as a gun sight and circled slowly as three
multibarrel 7-62mm machine guns fired 18,000 rounds per minute from the door
and two windows in the port side of the passenger compartment. The aircraft
was called "Puff" after a popular song of the day, and because it resembled
a dragon overhead with flames billowing from its guns. Men on the ground
welcomed the presence of Puff and the later Spooky version, which was
essentially the same as the Puff, because of its ability to concentrate a
heavy dose of defensive fire in a surgically determined area.
Capt. Kryszak's Puff was assigned a mission which took it over Khammouane
Province, Laos on June 3, 1966. His crew that day included 1Lt. Russell D.
Martin; Col. Harding E. Smith; TSgt. Harold E. Mullins; TSgt. Luther L.
Rose; and SSgt. Ervin Warren. On such a crew, it was common for the officers
to be the flight crew, while the sergeants acted as aerial gunners. On this
crew, Mullins was the flight engineer.
At a point about 10 miles east of Ban Pha Philang near the borders of
Savannakhet and Khammouane Provinces, Capt. Kryszak's aircraft was shot
down. The Puff was seen to crash by another aircraft in the area. No
parachutes were seen and no emergency radio beeper signals were heard, yet
at least one of the men onboard the aircraft was known to have survived.
(Col. Harding E. Smith, according to a list compiled by the National League
of Families of POW/MIA in Southeast Asia survived this incident.)
The belief that Smith survived the crash may have been prompted by a
statement by Soth Pethrasi on September 13, 1968. This statement, monitored
from Puerto Rico, mentioned "Smith, Christiano, Jeffords, and Mauterer" as
being part of "several dozen captured American airmen" whom the Pathet Lao
were "treating correctly and who [were] still in Laos." There are only three
Smiths listed missing in Laos prior to September 13, 1968. These are Harding
E. Smith, Jr., Lewis P. Smith and Warren P. Smith.
According to the Air Force, subsequent searches for the aircraft revealed
the wreckage of the aircraft, but the crew could not be located. All
personnel aboard were declared Missing in Action.
The crew of the Puff lost on June 3, 1966 are among nearly 600 Americans
lost in Laos during the Vietnam War. Even though the Pathet Lao stated
publicly that they held "tens of tens" of American prisoners, not one
American held in Laos was ever released -- or negotiated for.
Since American involvement in the war in Southeast Asia ended, nearly 10,000
reports have been received by the U.S. Government relating to Americans
missing in Southeast Asia. Many authorities have reluctantly concluded that
there are hundreds left alive in captivity today.
When the United States left Southeast Asia, what was termed "peace with
honor" was in reality an abandonment -- of the freedom-loving peoples of
Vietnam and Laos, and of America's best men. It's time we brought our men
home.
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[ssrep7.txt 02/09/93]
SMITH 324 COMPELLING CASES
Laos Theodore E. Kryszak
Russell D. Martin
Harding E. Smith
Harold E. Mullins
Ervin Warren
Luther L. Rose
(0354)
On June 19, 1968, an AC-47 aircraft departed Ubon Air Base,
Thailand, on an armed reconnaissance mission over South Laos. At
2125 hours the crew reported their aircraft was on fire and a fire
could be seen in the right wing root. Fire soon engulfed the
entire right side of the aircraft and burning pieces began to fall
away from it. The order was given to bail out and that was the
last transmission from the aircraft's crew.
The aircraft, still on fire, continued in a straight level flight
for approximately 5-10 seconds before turning nose over and
crashing in a high angle dive, impacting 30 miles northeast of
Tchepone. There was no hostile ground fire observed at the time.
There were no parachutes observed and no emergency beepers. An
airborne search and rescue force located the tail assembly of the
aircraft but no evidence of the crew or that any survived. The
crew was declared missing in action.
On September 13, 1968, the Pathet Lao news service reporting that
Harding Eugene Smith was shot down on June 3, 1968 when his
aircraft was bombing a Pathet Lao controller area of Laos.
The crew was not accounted for by the Pathet Lao during Operation
Homecoming and returning U.S. POWs has no knowledge of their
eventual fate. The crew members were declared dead/body not
recovered, based on a presumptive finding of death on separate
dates between June 1974 and January 1979.
========================================
Associated Press Newswires
Sunday, November 7, 2004
Son finally able to bury father shot down in Vietnam war
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) - Harding E. Smith's son had to wait almost 40 years to
give the former Air Force lieutenant colonel a proper burial. The former Los
Gatos resident had been missing and presumed killed in action after his
AC-47 gunship was shot down over Laos in 1966. The crew's remains were
discovered a decade ago, but his were positively identified only recently.
He was buried Friday at Arlington National Cemetery.
"I'm older than my father was when he was shot down," said Smith's son,
Gene, a physics professor at the University of California, San Diego.
He said he had disagreements with his father over the Vietnam war, a family
conflict that was never resolved when his father was called to serve.
"I had hoped at one point that being declared killed in action, or at the
memorial service, there would be some closure there, but I've just never
found it," Smith told the San Francisco Chronicle. "So ... it is painful."
Individual bone fragments and personal objects belonging to the six crewmen,
including Harding Smith's dog tag and Geneva Convention card, were recovered
by a joint U.S.-Lao excavation team in 1995. Forensic anthropologists
concluded after extensive study that the bones were from all six men.
Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Luther L. Rose, of Howe, Texas, who was the
aerial gunner aboard the AC-47 "Spooky," was buried last summer.
The other four were Air Force Col. Theodore E. Kryszak, of Buffalo, N.Y.;
Air Force Lt. Col. Russell D. Martin, of Bloomfield, Iowa; Air Force Chief
Master Sgt. Ervin Warren, of Philadelphia; and Air Force Chief Master Sgt.
Harold E. Mullins, of Denver.
The AC-47, a World War II-era cargo plane that had been converted to a
gunship, was shot down on June 3, 1966, during a nighttime armed
reconnaissance mission over southern Laos. At the time, U.S. forces were
secretly engaged in combat there to disrupt communist Lao and North
Vietnamese forces.
Gene Smith, now 57, was a freshman at the California Institute of Technology
in Pasadena when he was informed that his father, who was 48, was missing in
action.
Over the next nine years, the status of Smith's father went from MIA to
killed in action. The family held a memorial service in 1975 without his
remains.
On Friday, in a 30-minute ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, he was
buried with full military honors that included a 21-gun salute and Air Force
band.
Harding Smith was a B-29 navigator in the last part of World War II. He also
served in Korea before receiving his orders for Vietnam in 1965.
After his father was shot down, Gene Smith, an only child, continued his
studies. He was pursuing a graduate degree in astrophysics at the University
of California, Berkeley, during the turbulent 1970s.
"There was this schizophrenic thing of being at school in Berkeley, with all
the ferment, and having my father shot down and missing," he told the
Chronicle. "At that time, I'd realized that the Vietnam War was a pretty
senseless exercise, and I shared the view of most of my colleagues at
Berkeley.
"But it was very difficult. I didn't feel I could be too vocal because of my
father, and it was a difficult subject to discuss with my mother."
If his father had not been missing in action, he said, his mother might have
reached a similar conclusions, "which is that what he was doing had no
purpose."