|
This is Gregory Barras, taken from his USAF Skyraider Training Class photo.
Click on the photo to view the entire picture and other photos.
|
Name |
Gregory Inman Barras |
|
Rank/Branch |
O4/US Air Force |
|
Serial Number: |
428565433 |
|
Date of Birth |
13 October 1932 |
|
Home City of Record |
Jackson MS |
|
Date of Loss |
18 December 1968 |
|
Country of Loss |
Laos |
|
Loss Coordinates |
173500N 1053100E (WE604443) |
|
Status (in 1973) |
Missing in Action |
|
Category |
3 - Doubtful Knowledge
This category includes personnel whose loss incident is such that it is doubtful that the enemy would have knowledge of the specific individuals (e.g., aircrews lost over water or remote areas). |
|
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground |
A1H |
|
The Wall |
Panel 36W - Row 041 |
|
Other Personnel In
Incident |
(none missing) |
|
Source |
Compiled by Homecoming II Project 15 October 1990 from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S. Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews. Updated by the
P.O.W. NETWORK
1998. |
The Douglas A1 Skyraider ("Spad") is a highly maneuverable, propeller driven aircraft designed as a multipurpose attack bomber or utility aircraft. The A1 was first used by the Air Force in its Tactical Air Command to equip the first Air Commando Group engaged in counterinsurgency operations in South Vietnam, and later used in roles ranging from multi-seat electronic intelligence gathering to Navy antisubmarine warfare and rescue missions...
Maj. Gregory I. Barras was an A1 pilot sent on a combat mission on December 18, 1968. He departed his base (probably in Thailand) and continued along his briefed flight path until he was over the Ho Chi Minh Trail area of Laos. About 20 miles west of the Mu Gia Pass, Barras' aircraft was hit by enemy fire and crashed...
The Mu Gia Pass was one of several passageways through the mountainous border of Vietnam and Laos. American aircraft flying from Thailand to missions over North Vietnam flew through them regularly, and many aircraft were lost. On the Laos side of the border coursed the "Ho Chi Minh Trail", a road heavily traveled by North Vietnamese troops moving materiel and personnel to their destinations through the relative safety of neutral Laos. The return ratio of men lost in and around the passes is far lower than that of those men lost in more populous areas, even though both were shot down by the same enemy and the same weapons. This is partly due to the extremely rugged terrain and resulting difficulty in recovery.
The opportunity existed that Barras ejected safely and he was classified Missing in Action. He is among nearly 600 Americans who were lost in Laos during U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.
When the war ended and 591 Americans were released from POW camps, not one who had been held in Laos came home. The U.S. did not negotiate with the Lao for the POWs they stated they held because the U.S. did not recognize the communist government faction, the Pathet Lao.
Since American involvement in Vietnam ended in 1975, over 10,000 reports relating to Americans missing, prisoner, or otherwise unaccounted for in Indochina have been received by the U.S. Government. Many officials, having examined this largely classified information, have reluctantly concluded that many Americans are still alive today, held captive by our long-ago enemy.
Whether Barras survived the crash of his aircraft to be captured by the multitude of enemy along the Ho Chi Minh Trail is certainly not known. It is not known if he might be among those thought to be still alive today. What is certain, however, is that as long as even one American remains alive, held against his will, we owe him our very best efforts to bring him to freedom.
Gregory I. Barras graduated from West Point in 1955. He was promoted to the rank of Colonel during the period he was maintained missing.
I received the following email on December 18, 1998:
Allow me to introduce myself. I am Frank Davis, LtCol USAF (Ret). I flew Skyraiders with Greg Barras in South East Asia at the time of his death. I was most pleased to find out about your web site. I would like to share some of my recollections of experiences we had together on this 30th anniversary of his death.
I was in Training Class 68-04 (my picture is there on the Skyraider web site), one class behind Greg. Rather than going directly to S.E.A., we both were sent to England AFB, La., to form the new 6th Special Operations Squadron. In February 1968 we made a unit deployment with the destination of Pleiku in the central highlands of Vietnam. En route we did Jungle Survival School at Clark AB, PI. After coming out of the jungle, four of us had our orders changed to go the 1st Air Commando Sq. at Nakhom Phanom Royal Thai AFB. Ironically the1st ACS had recently transferred there from Pleiku. Greg and I were among those four to be transferred.
On my first combat mission, a right seat orientation ride, one of the four, also on his first mission, was KIA. The mission was to deliver ordinance at low level at Tchepone, Laos. Enough people, myself included, witnessed the ground fire and unsurvivable crash to declare both crewmembers KIA without body recovery. At about the mid-point of our tour one of the four transferred to 7th AF hq. in Saigon, and Greg went from the squadron to work in Wing Headquarters. He continued to fly combat missions with both the 1st ACS Hobos and the newly formed 22nd SOS Zoros with their night flying role.
As I recall (30 years does dull the memory) Greg scheduled himself to fly a single ship night mission on the 18th of December, 1968. It was not at all unusual for us to go out as a flight of one, cruise up and down the "trail", and wait for a Forward Air Controller to find us a target. I assume this is what Greg did. I am unaware of any witnesses to his crash. The first we knew about it was simply that he did not return. The next day a crash site was observed.
Of the seven pilots we lost during my tour, the loss of Greg hit me the hardest. I had become a personal friend of his, partly, I am sure, due to the fact that we had arrived together, and were already talking about rotating home in one and a half months.
Again, let me thank you for remembering and honoring Greg Barras.
Sincerely,
Frank Davis
I received the following email from Bill Barrett on December 9, 2006:
I'll start with an introduction. My name is Bill Barrett and I was a C-130 Loadmaster from 1966 to 1970. One of my missions in my SEA tour was to fly over Laos as a crew member on Blindbat. Blindbat was a C 130 Forward Air Controller function over the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This site will give you an over view of the Blindbat mission: The Blind Bat Page
I recently picked up a copy of Vietnam Air Losses by Chris Hobson. In it he lists and gives a small definition of all combat air losses in SEA. I cross referenced my flight dates with Blindbat along with aircraft losses. When I flew with Blindbat we were based out of Ubon, Thailand. The fighters we worked were from all over Vietnam and Navy Aircraft carriers. We never met or talked to the pilots except over the target. We never knew who they were or where they were based. And I as an enlisted man never had the chance to know any of them.
To get to the point I am sure we were working Major Barras when he crashed. Here are the memories that my co-pilot, 1st Lt. Keith Clayton, and I wrote up concerning that incident.
"BB: One night we had an old prop job making a run on a truck to drop napalm on it when the whole sky lit up. Calling the pilot got no result. Our pilots said the fighter pilot got target fixation and flew into the ground."
"KC: The guy who flew into the ground was in an A-1. I don't remember his
name, but I think he was a major on his first mission in-country."
Keith and I wrote this 30 years later.
Remember we had no contact with the people we worked as FACs except in the air over the target, what we learned later was just rumor. The date is right and we, Blindbat 1, were flying that night. The explosion was huge. To big to be a napalm drop. We called and called and there was no response. That's when the pilots decided the plane had gone in. There was no chance that there was a survivor. There were no radio calls before the crash to indicate that anything was wrong. No calls after impact.
I saw a number of crashes and heard others get shot down. I have no idea of what happened to any of them. I have been to Washington DC a number of times and when I go to the wall I look at the months from Dec. 1968 and March 1969 and wonder how many of those names on the wall I saw shot down.
- DISTINGUISHED FLYING CROSS with 2 bronze oak leaf clusters
- PURPLE HEART (Posthumous)
- AIR MEDAL with 1 silver and 2 bronze oak leaf clusters
- AIR FORCE COMMENDATION MEDAL
- PRESIDENTIAL UNIT CITATION
- COMBAT READINESS MEDAL
- NATIONAL DEFENSE SERVICE MEDAL
- VIETNAM SERVICE MEDAL with 3 bronze service stars
- AIR FORCE LONGEVITY SERVICE AWARD with 1 silver oak leaf cluster
- Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon
- RVN GALLANTRY CROSS with palm
- RVN CAMPAIGN MEDAL
Almost 30 years from the date of his disappearance on 18 December 1968, it was finally announced that Col. Barras' remains had been identified:
Advocacy And Intelligence Index
For Prisoners Of War/Missing In Action, Inc. (AIIPOWMIAI)
Bob Necci and Andi Wolos
THE POW/MIA E-MAIL NETWORK (c)
aiidec03.98c
Defense Prisoner Of War/Missing Personnel Office
No. 189-M
MEMORANDUM FOR CORRESPONDENTS Dec. 3, 1998
The remains of two American airmen previously unaccounted-for from the war in Southeast Asia have been identified and are being returned to the United States for burial. They are identified as Air Force Col. Gregory I. Barras, Jackson, Miss., and Air Force Capt. Joseph O. Brown, Norwalk, Conn.
Barras was flying his A-1H Skyraider on a night armed reconnaissance mission on Dec. 18, 1968, over Khammouan Province, Laos. The target of his flight of aircraft was a truck convoy. Barras radioed that he was beginning the attack on the target, but in the darkness, eyewitness pilots saw only a large flash near the target area followed by a series of explosions that formed a line 200-300 meters long. The other pilots were unable to establish radio contact with Barras, and heard no emergency beeper signals. In the light of flares dropped from other aircraft, searchers could see only wreckage of an aircraft, but no signs of a survivor.
In 1991, a joint team of specialists from the US Joint Casualty Resolution Center and from Laos interviewed a local informant in a small village near the crash site. He recalled burying an American pilot nearby amid the widely scattered wreckage of an aircraft. The team excavated the site and found pilot-related items, personal effects and human remains.
Brown was the pilot of a O-1F Bird Dog aircraft flying a forward air control mission over Khammouan Province, Laos, on April 19, 1966. He radioed that his aircraft's horizontal stabilizer had been shot away by enemy fire, and was climbing to a higher altitude. But as the crew of the other aircraft watched, Brown's aircraft went into a dive, rolled twice and crashed. They saw no parachute and heard no emergency beeper signals.
Joint teams of US and Laos specialists visited the area of the crash on two occasions in 1994 and 1995. Led by the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, the teams recovered pilot-related items, an aircraft data plate from Brown's aircraft, as well as human remains.
Anthropological analysis of the remains and other evidence by the US Army Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii established the identification of both Barras and Brown.
With the identification of these two Air Force officers, the remains of 507 Americans have been accounted for since 1973, and 2,076 are still unaccounted-for from the war in Southeast Asia. The US government welcomes and appreciates the cooperation of the government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic which led to the accounting of these Servicemen. We hope that such cooperation will bring increased results in the future. Achieving the fullest possible accounting for these Americans is of the highest national priority.
Email:
lorrie@scally.com
|
