Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Medal of Honor recipient Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard L. Etchberger poses for a photo at Udorn Air Base, Thailand. It was taken shortly before his death in March 1968 during a battle at a secret U.S. radar site on a mountain peak in Laos.
Episode 2748 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger and his Congressional Medal of Honor award. The featured story comes from The U.S. Department of Defense website and was titled: Medal of Honor Monday: Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger. It was submitted by Katie Lange, the outstanding writer for DOD News.
Lange, in her story, reported that many military men and women do heroic things that they can’t get credit for because they’re involved in classified missions. For Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard Loy Etchberger, he finally did get credit in the form of the Medal of Honor 42 years after he lost his life saving others during the Vietnam War.
Lange added this about Richard Etchberger. he was born March 5, 1933, in Hamburg, Pennsylvania, to Donald and Kathryn Etchberger. He had an older brother named Robert.
When their father lost his job after the Pearl Harbor attacks, both boys started to work odd jobs to help with finances. Eventually, the family moved to nearby Minersville, Pennsylvania, so his dad could find more work. There, Etchberger became a star basketball player and excelled in academics. His brother said it helped that he had a photographic memory.
Etchberger enlisted in the Air Force. He initially wanted to be a pilot, his brother said, but due to an injury that lingered from his basketball days, he washed out of aviation school. Instead, he was trained as a radio operator and came to be known to be an electronics whiz.
Etchberger was assigned to the 1043rd Radar Evaluation Squadron and placed on a top-secret Air Force/CIA mission code-named Project Heavy Green. It called for Etchberger and a small team to go to a small radar station on top of a remote mountain in Laos that was being used to direct U.S. air support to North Vietnam during the early years of the war.
Listen to episode 2748 and discover more about Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger and his Congressional Medal of Honor award.
