Gish, Henry Gerald
Air Force Staff Sergeant

Henry Gerald Gish, age 25, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Lancaster county.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Monday, March 11, 1968
Death details:

On June 23, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Henry Gerald Gish, missing from the Vietnam War.

Gish entered the U.S. Air Force from Pennsylvania and served with Detachment 1, 1043rd Radar Evaluation Squadron. In 1968, he and 18 other men were assigned to Lima Site 85, a tactical air navigation radar site on a remote, 5,600-foot mountain peak known as Phou Pha Thi in Houaphan Province, Laos. In the early morning of March 11, North Vietnamese commandos attacked the site with grenades and mortars, causing the Americans to seek safety on a narrow ledge of the steep mountain. A few hours later, under the protective cover of A-1 Skyraider aircraft, U.S. helicopters were able to rescue eight of the men. Gish and ten other Americans were killed in action and unable to be recovered. From 1994 to 2009, in cooperation with Vietnam and Laos, joint teams led by DPAA’s predecessor, Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, conducted multiple recovery operations, pursuing witness leads and recovering evidence and remains. In 2023, DPAA personnel and members from partner organizations discovered unexploded ordnance, incident-related materials, and possible remains from the research site, leading to the identification of a missing American service member. In 2025, joint recovery teams conducted two more excavations at the site, recovering human remains that were returned to the DPAA laboratory for further study. There scientists used modern forensic techniques to identify Gish.

He is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. His name is also inscribed along with all his fallen comrades on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency