Eugene Lunsford Clay from Arlington, Texas, Tarrant county.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Thursday, November 9, 1967
Death details: On November 9, 1967, an HH-3E Jolly Green Giant (tail number 66-13279) with a crew of four took off on a rescue mission in Saravane Province, Laos. The Jolly Green Giant was the second of two helicopters responding to an emergency call made by a reconnaissance team that had suffered heavy casualties. The first helicopter successfully extracted all the team except for two wounded men. This Jolly Green Giant picked up these last two men, but was hit by ground fire after liftoff, crashed, and burned. The helicopter’s pilot survived the incident and was rescued, but the other occupants died in the crash. A recovery team reached the crash site later that day and found several sets of remains, but poor weather and enemy forces prevented helicopters from successfully extracting the bodies they found. Continued hostile presence in the area precluded further recovery efforts, and the remaining five men who were aboard the Jolly Green Giant are still unaccounted for.
Staff Sergeant Eugene Lunsford Clay, who joined the U.S. Air Force from Texas, was a member of the 37th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron. He was the flight engineer aboard the Jolly Green Giant when it went down, and was one of the men lost during the crash. Further attempts to recover his remains have been unsuccessful. Today, Staff Sergeant Clay is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
