Young, Barclay Bingham
Air Force Major

Barclay Bingham Young from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Broward county.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: Wednesday, March 29, 1972

Death details: On March 25, 2008, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Major Barclay Bingham Young, missing from the Vietnam War.

Major Young entered the U.S. Air Force from Connecticut and was a member of the 16th Special Operations Squadron. On March 29, 1972, he was a crew member aboard an AC-130A gunship (tail number 55-0044, nicknamed “Prometheus”) that took off from Ubon Airfield, Thailand, on a night reconnaissance mission to targets east of Savannakhet in southern Laos. The aircraft was shot down by enemy surface-to-air missiles, killing Maj Young and the other crew members. Search and rescue efforts were curtailed due to enemy activity, and Maj Young’s remains could not be recovered at the time. Between 1986 and 2006, joint U.S./Laotian teams excavated the crash site and recovered human remains and artifacts. Modern forensic techniques were eventually able to identify Maj Young among the remains recovered.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency