July 21, 2021 |
From somber and silent honor guards to rumbling and horn-blasting honor rides, patriotic tributes play out from Billings, Montana, to main streets in small Wyoming towns this week. First Lieutenant Alva Krogman was making his final trip home to Worland.
From high school to the battlefields of Viet Nam, the lieutenant’s friends called him Ray. The tributes continue today as family, hometown friends and fellow warriors bid a final farewell. An emotional motorcade consisting of a law enforcement escort, motorcycles and first responders followed the black hearse carrying the flag-draped casket with the Lieutenant’s remains down I-90 Monday. The procession was a powerful reminder of another troubled era of American history. The turnout all along the motorcade route was a fitting honor for an airman who finally returned home after going missing more than 50 years ago.
Governor Mark Gordon has ordered both the U.S. and Wyoming State Flags be flown at half-staff statewide from sunrise to sunset on today, July 21, 2021 in honor and memory of Krogman, whose plane was shot down during the Vietnam War while he was flying a scouting mission over Laos. The date was Jan. 17, 1967.
The Lieutenant served in the 504th Tactical Air Support Squadron. While television and movies of the Viet Nam war usually depict American pilots thundering across the sky in “Huey” helicopters and F-series fighter jets, Krogman was creeping at low altitude abovet the Ho Chi Minh trail in a single-engine Cessna 0-1 Bird Dog. His small plane was hit by enemy fire while flying on the Laos side of the border known as the “Steel Tiger.” The 606th Air Command Squadron had started flying combat missions in the area two weeks earlier.
In the book “Special Air Warfare and The Secret War in Laos,” written by retired Army Colonel Joseph D. Celeski, the sorties included armed reconnaissance, defoliation missions, and escort for the helicopters involved in the Pony Express. The daytime missions, which started January 9th, were later eliminated to give aircraft a better survivability rate.
Eight days after the combat missions started, on temporary duty to the 23rd Tactical Air Support Squadron, Krogman was flying forward air control in a slow-moving, unarmed Bird Dog. The call sign on his Cessna was “Nail 48.” The mission was locating targets along the Ho Chi Minh Trail for ground troops. Krogman flew the lead plane in a two aircraft formation, as many of the daytime sorties were configured that month
According to the report filed afterward, Lt. Krogman ’s aircraft was hit by enemy ground fire west of the DMZ in the extreme northern portion of the Savannakhet Province of Laos.
The other pilot on the mission reported that Krogman ’s Bird Dog suffered damage to the left wing. The second plane also came under attack from the kind of anti-aircraft gun that American actress Jane Fonda was photographed with six years later during an infamous anti-war propaganda stunt. The other Bird Dog also came under fire and was forced to take evasive action. The surviving pilot did not see Krogman ’s aircraft go down, nor did he see a parachute. He spotted burning wreckage, though, and called in the coordinates of the crash site.
A note in the military records of the incident states that a search and rescue team attempted to reach the crash scene, but resistance from enemy forces forced them to abort the mission. The plane was never located, and in 1973 Krogman was listed as “Killed/Body Not Recovered.”
Despite the official listing of killed in action, Krogman also was counted among the missing because no remains were found to return home. Laos was often called the “Black Hole” of the Prisoner Of War issue, because of the nearly 600 Americans lost there, not a single man thought to have been held as a POW was ever released alive.
More than 52 went by until the Kroberg’s status changed. On February, 14, 2019, a Scientific Recovery Expert working at what was believed to be the crash site reported the recovery of possible remains and material evidence. The initial discovery prompted a more intensive search, which yielded more remains. A positive identification was made on July 7, 2020.
Lt. Krogman finally came home this week. An honor guard met the flag-draped casket at the airport in Billings and a long honor ride to Worland followed. Krogman’s parents and his older brother never gave up hope, but they all passed before they saw the hero return. The lieutenant’s nephews and nieces will be at the public service for Lt. Krogman to be held at 11 a.m. Wednesday at the Worland Middle School Auditorium.
