Johnson, Gary Lee
Army Specialist 4
Gary Lee Johnson, age 20, from Malibu, California, Los Angeles county.
Service era: Vietnam
Date of death: Thursday, February 18, 1971
Death details: On February 18, 1971, a UH-1H Iroquois (tail number 68-15255) with four crew members took off as one of four helicopters on an emergency extraction mission for soldiers from a Special Forces camp located on the west side of A Shau Valley in Thua Thien Province, South Vietnam. Enemy troops fired on the Iroquois as it attempted to rescue the ground troops using a stable extraction rig, forcing the pilot to leave the area with three men still attached to the rigs. One of the troops on the extraction rigs fell off into the jungle and was eventually rescued. A short time after he fell, the helicopter was hit by enemy anti-aircraft fire, which caused it to crash and burn with the four crew members and two rescued ground troops still inside. Specialist 4 Gary Lee Johnson entered the U.S. Army from California and was a member of Company A, 101st Aviation Battalion, 101st Airborne Division. He was the door gunner aboard this Iroquois when it crashed, and was lost with the aircraft. Attempts to locate or identify his remains have been unsuccessful. Today, Specialist 4 Johnson is memorialized on the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Source: National Archives, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, findagrave.com