STROBRIDGE, RODNEY LYNN
Name: Rodney Lynn Strobridge
Rank/Branch: O3/US Army
Unit: Battery F, 79th Artillery Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division
Date of Birth: 22 May 1941 (Denver CO)
Home City of Record: Torrance CA
Date of Loss: 11 May 1972
Country of Loss: South Vietnam
Loss Coordinates: 113825N 1063639E (XT766872)
Status (in 1973): Missing in Action
Category: 4
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: AH1G
Other Personnel in Incident: Robert J. Williams (missing)
REMARKS:
Source: Compiled 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.
SYNOPSIS: On May 11, 1972, Capt. Robert J. Williams, pilot, and Capt. Rodney
L. Strobridge, co-pilot, were flying an AH1G helicopter (tail #69-15009), as
wingmen in a flight of three AH1G helicopters launched to support allied
forces at An Loc, in Binh Long Province, South Vietnam.
While pulling off the target, the aircraft was hit by enemy ground fire.
Something had hit near the tail boom, and it was severed from the fusilage.
The aircraft went into a flat spin and crashed. It was believed that a SAM
(surface to air missile) had hit the aircraft because of the immediate
separation of the tail boom.
Capt. Williams' last radio transmission was, "Oh, my God!"
No further radio contact was made with Williams and Strobridge. No one saw
the helicopter hit the ground. Both men were thought to have died in the
crash of their aircraft.
A refugee later reported that while serving in the 21st Division Engineers
at An Loc, he discovered the skeletal remains of an American. The U.S. Army
believes this could have been Williams or Strobridge, but the remains have
never been recovered.
According to witnesses, Williams and Strobridge are almost certainly dead.
Tragically, their families have no grave holding their bodies to visit.
Their remains are on enemy soil and not buried in their homeland. Even more
tragically, evidence mounts that hundreds of Americans are still alive, held
captive in Southeast Asia. What must they be thinking of us?
[nbcn414.98 04/26/98]
From: Lynn O'Shea
Here is a transcript of the NBC story on the identity of the Vietnam
Unknown. While the National Alliance of Families does not endorse the
use of mt-DNA testing as a primary means of identification, we urge you
to visit the web site shown below. We urge you to vote for the families
right to know. (Please note: as bad a typist as I am errors in the story
regarding the family names are MSNBC, not mine)
http://www/msnbc.com/news/160869.asp
DNA testing may make it possible to identify the remains of the Vietnam
War serviceman buried there.Tomb of unknown may really be known Vietnam
remains may be identifiable
By Jim Miklaszewski
NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT WASHINGTON, April 24
The Tomb of the Unknowns is the U.S. military' most sacred shrine, but
there's a strong possibility that the Vietnam veteran buried there may
not be unknown after all. After a lengthy investigation, Department of
Defense officials appear ready to open the tomb to try to identify the
remains.
PENTAGON SOURCES tell NBC News it's almost certain the Tomb of the
Unknowns will be opened and the remains of the Vietnam Veteran exhumed
for DNA testing.
In fact, strong evidence indicates the remains may be of one of two
American pilots killed in action in Vietnam 26 years ago Air Force pilot
Michael Joseph Blase or Army Capt. Rodney Strobridge.
For 26 years Blaze's family was never told his remains may have been
recovered. His sister, Pat Blase, says their mother deserves to know.
That is her son, says Blase. She gave him up once. I don't believe she
has to give him up again.
Althea Stobridge was only recently told it could be her son in the tomb.
People lose their children but they've got a body, says Stobridge. I
lose mine and I've got nothing. After 26 years, she says,
she doesn't need to know.
Blase and Strobridge were shot down and killed only two miles apart near
An Loc on the same day in 1972. Six months, later a partial set of
remains and Blaze's ID card were recovered. Should the military do DNA
testing on theTomb of the Unknowns?
"I know it was Michael Joseph Blase who we recovered," says Bill Parcel,
who was an Army colonel at An Loc. But six years later, the Army morgue
at the Central Identification lab in Hawaii found that the blood type
and bones were a closer match to Strobridge.
David Kelly was a casualty analyst for the military lab. "It was
strongly felt the remains were portions of Strobridge, not Blase," he
says.
But without a positive ID, military officials in Washington designated
the remains unidentified. In 1984, in an elaborate ceremony, those same
remains were buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns.
Today, there's a good chance that modern DNA technology could identify
the remains. Dr. Mitchell Holland and other experts at the Armed Forces
DNA Laboratory in Rockville, Md., are confident they can solve the
mystery. "There's a strong likelihood that if we were asked, we would be
able to get a result from these remains," Holland says.
But after all these years, Althea Strobridge says she doesn't need to
know if it's her son in the tomb. "I just know that he's dead. Still
dead," she says.
The Blazes want the tomb reopened. "We believe it is him," says Pat
Blase. "If it comes back that it's not him, we will still know the
truth."
The worst case is that DNA testing would still be inconclusive. Whatever
the outcome, today's science makes it unlikely there will ever be
another U.S. combat causality classified as unknown.
Strobridge's Voyage Through Life
By JERRY SCHWARTZ
The Associated Press
It was long ago - 40 years ago -- but Don Latham still remembers watching
Rodney Strobridge pitch.
It wasn't that he was a great player; Torrance High School had better pitchers
than this junk-balling righthander.
What Latham remembers is Rod Strobridge's hands.
"He used to have a fungal infection on his hands," says Latham. "It would
eat through his skin, make them tender, and they would bleed at the slightest
touch. But he still pitched, and his hands would bleed."
Rod could easily be dismissed as just another fun-loving kid -- easygoing,
always joking. But then there was this determined boy on the mound, blood
oozing from his hand as he gripped the ball.
It was this boy who would be sent to Vietnam. It was this boy who would win
the Silver and Bronze stars, the Distinguished Flying Cross. It was this boy
whose helicopter would plummet from the sky at An Loc.
And it is this boy, Pentagon officials say, who may be buried in the Tomb of
the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
They're going to open the tomb; they're going to test DNA from the bones
against blood from nine different families. Ultimately, they hope to identify
this man. If he finds a name, he will no longer be a symbol of a nation's
grief; instead, he will be returned to his family, and to their own, private
sorrow.
Twenty years after her son was declared dead, Althea Strobridge wears his MIA
bracelet. "I say hello to him every day," she says.
He was her eldest, born in 1941, in Denver, five years before Connie and 10
years before Brian.
George Strobridge, a plumber, went into the Navy. When he came home from the
war, the family moved often, to Colorado Springs, to Nebraska, and finally in
1952 to Torrance, near Los Angeles.
Rodney was so easygoing, Mrs. Strobridge says, that she tended to give him
more responsibility than she should have. At an early age, he was baby-
sitting his sister and brother.
He liked to play ball. He got good grades, though he was no scholar. He was,
his high school yearbook reports, "well known for his good nature and sense
of humor."
Mostly, he hung out with his friends, Don Latham, Ricky Boucher and Jimmy
Johnson. "The four musketeers," recalls Charlotte McComas Kyes, who used to
join them at the Methodist Youth Fellowship. "You never saw one of them
without the other three."
It was a standard adolescence of the 1950s. Latham remembers the dances, and
the trips to El Prado Park to play football on Saturday afternoons. He
remembers how the friends would gather at Tom Nordstrom's house and play cards
when they should have been in school.
"He skipped school for 30 days," his mother says, chuckling. "They weren't
doing anything bad, but they weren't going to school, either."
After graduation, he earned some money pouring concrete at missile bases in
Nebraska with an uncle, Clarence Lacy. He went to community colleges in El
Camino and Santa Monica, but never graduated. He worked for an aerospace
electronics company, and traveled to install its equipment.
Paul Guiso roomed with Strobridge from 1961-65. "Gosh, we partied. We were
young guys and it was Southern California. It was a great time."
There was an eight-month marriage -- neither of his parents (who had by this
time divorced, themselves) recall his wife's name.
"There were a lot of girls," Guiso says. Mrs. Strobridge says Rodney looked
like the actor Robert Wagner, and the pictures bear her out: "He had deep
blue eyes. They were so blue that they almost looked black."
He received a draft deferment, Guiso says, because of the skin condition that
so impressed his high school pal. It was a ticket out of the military -- a
very desirable ticket for many men of the time.
Instead, he used a lotion, and he was drafted into the Army.
"We were never a part of the anti-American crap," Guiso said. Strobridge's
uncle, Lacy, says it was simple: "He knew his father served, and I served,
and he wanted to serve."
Lacy recommended that he apply for officer's school, but Rodney said he didn't
want it. "I told him, when you get out there and you're crawling under
barbed wire down there with the snakes, you'll change your mind."
Strobridge graduated from Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill in Lawton,
Okla., on Dec. 17, 1966.
In his first tour of Vietnam, Mrs. Strobridge says, he worked in
reconnaissance. He survived it, came back home, remarried. There was no talk
of leaving the Army; his parents say he was going to make a career of it. He
had drifted for a long while, and the Army gave his life purpose.
He was home on leave for Christmas 1971. He and his wife, Patricia, spent a
week with his mother in Iowa.
"I remember seeing him off," says Lacy. "I told him, `Don't go back there
and be a hero, because I don't want to read about you."'
On his second tour of Vietnam, Strobridge was trained to pilot the AH-1 Cobra
attack helicopter. And he was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division, Battery
F, 79th Artillery - otherwise known as the Blue Max.
Their mission was to lend aerial support to the troops on the ground. They
would swoop down at speeds of up to 140 mph, guns blazing.
The pilots of the Blue Max were already legendary for their heroism. There
were 32 of them, and they passed whatever free time they had together, at
their own officers' club at their base at Long Thong North.
There was "no silk-scarf stuff," says David Funk, then a major who would
soon command the Blue Max. Everyone seemed to have a nickname - Rick
Rickenbacker became "Fast Eddie" when he became an aircraft commander within
weeks of his arrival.
Strobridge didn't have a nickname, Rickenbacker says. He was too new. He was
a "bullet catcher," sitting in the Cobra's front seat while the aircraft
commander sat in the rear. He did not live long enough to be checked out on
the Cobra, and to move to the rear seat.
On April 13, the North Vietnamese attacked An Loc, a provincial capital 80
miles north of Saigon. The town's South Vietnamese troops and American
advisors were besieged.
The Blue Max went in. Day after day, the pilots returned to combat. Over
seven weeks, nine of the 32 would die.
Strobridge won the Distinguished Flying Cross on April 27; the citation says
bad weather forced him to operate "within range of enemy small arms," and
that he persisted though he came under fire.
Two weeks later, on May 11, Strobridge was flying with Capt. Robert John
Williams, a seasoned pilot who had been a helicopter trainer.
Larry McKay, the commanding officer, says Strobridge and Williams destroyed
two of the big T-54 tanks on An Loc's southwest perimeter.
But then, the radio crackled: "MISSILE, MISSILE, MISSILE!"
A heat-seeking missile -- probably fired by a handheld launcher -- shot toward
the Cobra's exhaust pipe. There was an explosion. The helicopter went one
way, its tail boom another.
None of the Americans saw them hit the ground.
Strobridge was declared dead in 1978. Posthumously, he was promoted from
captain to major, and there was a memorial service in Torrance. A marker was
placed at Arlington, but his remains were missing.
At least until now.
The Pentagon says the remains of any one of nine soldiers who died at An Loc
may be in the Tomb of the Unknown. The pelvis, right upper arm and four ribs
will be tested with methods that are more sophisticated than those available
when the remains were entombed, in 1984.
Rodney Strobridge was 5-foot-9 and 30 years old, and had type-O blood, all
characteristics of the man in the tomb, according to the old tests. But other
evidence found with the bones points to 1st Lt. Michael Blassie, who died the
same day as Strobridge, and whose family has led the effort to open the crypt.
George and Althea Strobridge will go along, but they are unenthusiastic. "I
don't need that," says Althea. "It's a long time getting over it, and I'm
not over it yet," says George.
It has been a long time. Althea is 79. George is 78; his second wife died
three years ago. Rodney Strobridge's wife, Patricia, remarried years ago and
lives in Virginia.
Paul Guiso, his old roommate, turns 60 in July. He has two grandchildren.
Rick Rickenbacker, his fellow Cobra pilot, works for Boeing in Mesa, Ariz.,
and has recovered from a heart attack to fly at age 54. His commanding
officer, Larry McKay, teaches at The Citadel and is general partner of a
private golf club.
And Don Latham, with whom he cut school and played ball, is a chiropractor in
Palos Verdes Peninsula, minutes from the old neighborhood.
But Rodney Lynn Strobridge, their son and friend, brother in arms and partner
in love, is still 11 days short of 31, a handsome smile in fading photographs.
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