Chief Master Sergeant Richard Etchberger; Lima Site 85-March 11, 1968
- Vicki Ekmark
- Mar 24
- 4 min read
In 1968, Richard Etchberger was 35 years old and one of only a few men to reach the E9 ranking in the United States Air Force. Etchberger grew up in Hamburg, Pennsylvania with his parents and younger brother. He attended Hamburg High School, where he was a standout on the basketball team. After he graduated in 1951, he joined the Air Force, which trained him as a radar technician. Etchberger proved extremely skilled at his chosen occupational specialty and was an exceptional airman. In 1965 and 1966 he was deployed to Southeast Asia and based in the Philippines, from where he helped set up crucial radar sites throughout the war theater. By 1968, then a 17-year veteran of the service, he had achieved the rank of Chief Master Sergeant. Due to his experience and expertise, he was asked to volunteer to work at a crucial new secret CIA radar station in Laos, codenamed Lima Site 85.
On March 11, 1968, at about 3:00 am, a group of North Vietnamese commandos attacked a top-secret American radar facility on top of a sheer mountainside in Laos. The station and its personnel, nineteen Americans and a few dozen Hmong fighters, were not equipped to repel a ground assault, and the station was quickly overrun. Nine survivors managed to find defensible shelter under a rock outcrop on a cliff edge, just below the radar station. From there, the only un-injured man, Chief Master Sergeant Richard Etchberger, was able to hold off enemy troops with an M-16 rifle while also radioing for help. Etchberger was killed hours later, but not before he helped save eight men and earned the Medal of Honor.
In mid-August 1966, it had become clear to U.S. military leaders that the bombing campaign against North Vietnam required better guidance in order to accurately find and hit targets in far northern North Vietnam. The Central Intelligence Agency solved this technological challenge by establishing a secret tactical air control and navigation station in Laos, just miles from the North Vietnamese border. CIA and Air Force personnel built the tiny station, known as Lima Site 85, on top of Phou Pha Thi Mountain. It was remote, with nearly vertical cliffs on three sides. U.S. government policy at the time prohibited U.S. troops from operating within Laos; therefore, the CIA personnel and Air Force airmen manning the site, like Etchberger, posed as civilian employees of Lockheed Aircraft (a process nicknamed “sheep dipping”) to maintain plausible deniability for the United States regarding the employees of the station. Lima Site 85 used what at the time was highly advanced radar navigation technology, known as Combat Skyspot, to guide U.S. fighters and bombers to their targets in the Red River delta and Hanoi areas of North Vietnam.
The radar station remained in continuous operation into 1968, accessible only by helicopter—or so the United States hoped. But as North Vietnamese intelligence agents became aware of Lima Site 85’s existence and purpose, they determined to destroy it. In January 1968, as part of the operations leading up to the Tet Offensive, Communist forces converged on Phou Pha Thi Mountain. Initial attacks were from a distance, as Communist troops lobbed artillery shells at the mountain. American air support made them inaccurate and sparse. The United States and its Hmong indigenous allies managed to hold the Communists at arm’s length until March 1968, when a small group of North Vietnamese special forces scaled the mountain under the cover of night and overran it.
After escaping his quarters and grabbing a few weapons, Etchberger found himself amazingly unhurt and sheltered on a cliff face, but surrounded by people trying to kill him and his fellow airmen—most of whom were wounded. Though he had no specialized combat training, he and his companions held off North Vietnamese attempts to reach them while Etchberger used a small handheld radio to direct air strikes and call for evacuation. Numerous times, as grenades fell in the midst of the airmen, Etchberger and others managed to grab and lob them back down the mountain. After more than four hours of desperate defense, an Air America rescue chopper reached the stranded airmen.
Etchberger was the first to run for and grab the hoist let down from the helicopter, but not for himself. One by one, he helped the survivors into the sling to be taken aboard the hovering aircraft. By then the sun had come up, and most of this time he was entirely exposed to enemy fire. Richard Etchberger was the last survivor to leave the mountain. As he was being hoisted, a bullet struck and killed him.
A total of 11 Americans and more than 30 Hmong were killed in the battle for Lima Site 85. Those eight men who survived largely owed their lives to Richard Etchberger, who gave his own so that they could escape. Etchberger was initially posthumously given the Air Force Cross, the highest award the Air Force can bestow, but due to the extreme secrecy surrounding Lima Site 85, no one knew about his sacrifice, not even his family. His wife and three sons were only told that he had died in a helicopter crash in Laos. Finally, through an act of the United States Congress, Richard Etchberger posthumously received the Medal of Honor in 2010. His sons accepted the medal from President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony on September 21, 2010. Etchberger is also remembered on Panel 44E of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., along with the ten other Americans who died on Phou Pha Thi Mountain.
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