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Lenny Kravitz’s Hero Uncle and Other Lesser Known American Heroes

Khalid Elhassan August 18, 2020 35 min

American Revolutionary War - United States — The British surrender at Yorktown. Library of Congress

2. End of the Road in Vietnam

Larry Thorne, far left, shortly before his final flight. J Michael Cleverly

Larry Thorne trained NATO forces in West Germany, and ran a reconnaissance and sabotage school. In the late 1950s, he earned accolades for his role in a search and rescue mission in Iran’s Zagros Mountains. He deployed to Vietnam in 1963, as an adviser to South Vietnamese forces in the Mekong Delta, and earned a Bronze Star for valor plus two Purple Hearts. He returned to Vietnam for a second tour in 1965, and ended up with the Studies and Observations Group (SOG) – an unconventional special warfare unit.

On October 18^th, 1965, Captain Larry Thorne was overseeing an operation to identify Viet Cong positions on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, when his helicopter vanished in a mountainous area 25 miles from Da Nang. Rescue and recovery teams were unable to locate the chopper. Soon after his disappearance, he was posthumously promoted to major, was and awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross and Legion of Merit. Larry Thorne was 46 when his helicopter disappeared. Many who knew him had trouble believing that such a seemingly indestructible hero had actually died.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.