Billy Ray Laney, age 27, from Birmingham, Alabama, Jefferson county.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Saturday, June 3, 1967
Death details: On June 12, 2000, the Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii (CILHI) identified the remains of Sergeant Major Billy Ray Laney, missing from the Vietnam War. Sergeant Major Laney entered the U.S. Army from Alabama and was a member of the Command and Control Detachment, 5th Special Forces Group. On June 3, 1967, he was a passenger aboard a CH-46A Sea Knight (bureau number 150955, call sign “YWZ”) carrying six crew members and an unknown number of South Vietnamese special forces members on an extraction mission in Salavan (formerly Saravane) Province, Laos. While taking off from the landing zone, the aircraft was hit by enemy small arms fire and crashed, killing SGM Laney. His remains could not be recovered at the time. However, between 1993 and 1996, a joint U.S. task force traveled to Salavan Province and recovered artifacts and human remains from the site; the combined remains were sent to CILHI for analysis. Investigators were able to forensically identify SGM Laney among the remains.
Cemetery: New Home Missionary Baptist Church in Moreland, Alabama
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, findagrave.com