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…
