Fifty-two years after a U.S. spy plane was shot down over Laos, a family still fights for answers: Did the crew all perish or were half of them
LEFT BEHIND?
BY KEN MCLAUGHLIN
February 2, 2025
he tragic story of an American spy plane with the radio call sign Baron 52 began like so many other midnight missions over Indochina.
Shortly after 11 p.m. on Feb. 4, 1973, the plane left a Thai air force base with a crew of eight whose mission was to eavesdrop on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, North Vietnam’s shadowy, serpentine jungle artery for moving soldiers, tanks, arms and supplies south.
At 1:25 a.m., the flight crew of the EC-47Q radioed Moonbeam, an airborne command and control center, that several artillery rounds were fired at the plane over southern Laos, but it was not hit. Fifteen minutes later, the flight crew reported that the plane was taking on heavy anti-aircraft fire. It was the last time anyone heard from Baron 52 before the converted cargo plane fell out of the sky and landed in the dense Laotian jungle.
But this was no routine shootdown. Only eight days earlier, the United States and its South Vietnamese allies had signed the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. A key part of the pact was that the North Vietnamese would return hundreds of U.S. prisoners of war—and the first POWs were set to be released in seven days. The last thing the Americans needed was an international incident to complicate or even nix the deal.
https://thewarhorse.org/what-happened-to-crew-of-us-spy-plane-shot-down-by-north-vietnamese/
