Calfee, James Henry
Air Force Major sergeant

James Henry Calfee, age 36, from Boling, Texas, Wharton county.

Service era: Vietnam

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

On August 8, 2025, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified the remains of Master Sgt. James Henry Calfee, missing from the Vietnam War.

Calfee entered the U.S. Air Force from Texas and served with Detachment 1, 1043rd Radar Evaluation Squadron. In 1968, Calfee 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, the site was overrun by Vietnamese commandos 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. Calfee and 10 other Americans were killed in action and could not be recovered at the time. From 1994 to 2009, in cooperation with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Laos, joint teams led by DPAA’s predecessor Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) pursued multiple leads from dozens of witnesses interviewed, including those involved with the attack. In 2003, a joint team recovered remains during site investigation work along the western slopes of Phou Pha Thi. The remains were scientifically identified as one of the 11 missing Airmen from this incident. In 2005, a Laotian citizen provided U.S. officials an identification card belonging to another missing servicemember and human remains that had purportedly been found at the base of Phou Pha Thi. In 2023, DPAA personnel and members from partner organizations discovered unexploded ordnance, incident-related materials, possible material evidence, and possible osseus remains from the research site, leading to another identification of one of the missing. Joint recovery teams surveyed and excavated the site from Jan. 16 – Feb. 16, 2025, and March 2-31, 2025, recovering possible human remains, possible material evidence, and other osseus material. All remains and evidence were subsequently sent to the DPAA Laboratory for scientific analysis. Based on the laboratory analysis and total evidence available, a portion of the remains recovered were identified as those of Calfee.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency