Brauner, Henry Paul
Air Force Lieutenant colonel

Henry Paul Brauner from Franklin Park, New Jersey.

Service era: Vietnam

Date of death: March 29, 1972
Death details: On July 24, 2009, the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC, now DPAA) identified the remains of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Paul Brauner, missing from the Vietnam War.
Lieutenant Colonel Brauner entered the U.S. Air Force from New Jersey and was a member of the 16th Special Operations Squadron. On March 29, 1972, he was the navigator aboard an AC-130A (tail number 55-0044, nicknamed “Prometheus”) when it took off from Ubon Airfield, Thailand, on a night reconnaissance mission to targets east of Savannakhet in southern Laos. The gunship was shot down by enemy surface-to-air missiles, killing Lt Col Brauner and the other crew members. Search and rescue efforts were curtailed due to heavy enemy activity, and no crew member remains including those of Lt Col Brauner were recovered at that time. Between 1986 and 2006, joint U.S./Laotian teams excavated the gunship’s crash site in Savannakhet Province and recovered human remains and artifacts. DPAA analysts used modern forensic techniques to eventually identify Lt Col Brauner’s remains from among those recovered.

Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency