The Strange Case of Doc Laporte....

03USMC

03USMC

Active member
The Legend of Doc Laporte : One Night, He Parachuted Behind North Vietnamese Lines. The Navy Declared Him Dead, a Hero. The Men Who Served With Him Say He Went Over to the Other Side--and May Still Be Alive.


The last thing that anyone knows for sure about Doc Laporte is this: Several hours before dawn on Sept. 5, 1967, he was the fifth of nine men who parachuted from a transport plane into a hellish place named Happy Valley.
They were leaping virtually into the enemy's arms; they knew that. Hidden somewhere in the blackness below three canopies of jungle vegetation were two units of the fearsome 2nd North Vietnamese Army Division and an elite North Vietnamese special-forces battalion.

More at link:http://articles.latimes.com/1991-04-14/magazine/tm-530_1_north-vietnamese-army

http://www.reocities.com/pentagon/5000/laporte.html

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It's an interesting story but the fact that none of the important documents were recoverable means that it's suspect at best.
 
Op order, Parachute Operations Order, Jump Manifest , Team Roster and SOI, synopsis of debrief for 2-5 1st FRC Team Clubcar, Sept 1967 for patrol in Happy Valley AO. Pg's 56 thru 63.

http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/star/images/1201/1201010292.pdf

This story was well known and alot of the guys in 1st Force Recon Co at the time were pretty legandary in Recon, said Laporte steered away from the rest of the stick, had excess med supplies etc. So theres a group out there that believes Laporte went native and did a Garwood.

Flip side is a group that says he's didn't and wasn't that good of a jumper, and that the core group questioning his disappearnce/actions never got along with Laporte (incidentally thats always been the families version.


Michael Louis La Porte, of Los Angeles, a Navy hospital corpsman attached to a Marine Unit in Da Nang. La Porte, now 42, is listed as killed in action in Defense Department records and his name appears on the Vietnam monument in Washington.

http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/a...indles-family-s-hope-mia-is-alive-in-vie.html
 
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Yeah and that's what I mean. There are two conflicting versions of the story. I understand that the OPORDs etc. were found along with other strong evidence... and all that proves is that the mission took place.
The guy did jump in with a lot of medical supplies. Maybe he felt that the mission was a complete fubar (as did many) and felt that he was going to need it. Maybe since morphine was so precious, it was also precious to friendly guerrilla units in the area as well. Perhaps it was that he carried so much crap that made him lose control of his parachute. That is... if he even did jump in with a lot of morphine. I don't think there's any slam dunk evidence for that either.
When locals were asked about this man, were they asked leading questions? Such as "did you see a man with a scar?" They could have just said "yes" to avoid trouble.
As for his reported sighting, was there a reward for information regarding this man that would have encouraged informants to say they saw him even if they did not?
Perhaps he was initially captured and then just elected to stay in North Vietnam since he personally felt the war was wrong anyway.
Also, I find it hard to believe that if he was THAT much of a liability, that he would have been selected for the mission in the first place. And Force Recon or not, that nobody did any sort of basic equipment check before such an important mission.

I have no sympathy for traitors but the whole thing just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
 
I'd like to believe that a Corpsman assigned to 1st Force Recon wouldn't do it. But there is a lot of stuff that causes me to wonder.

He leaves, pen flares, signal gear, ammo and chow in favor of extra morphine and maybe, whole blood according to Webb and other Clubcar and 1st FRC sources. Okay, I can see a good Doc scrounging more morphine but why the whole blood? Plasma, or blood expander I can see but not the whole blood. So yeah maybe he disappears for a couple hours to scrounge more med supplies, because he thinks he'll need them, but leaving mission specific gear in favor of that ammo, chow, signaling gear? By all accounts Laporte had experiance on other ops and was pretty good at it, I believe that he would have at least spread it out among the team (ammo, chow, etc.) "Hey guys I think this op is a cluster so I'm carrying more med stuff split my ammo and chow with me." By accounts of Clubcar guys he was hauling serious wieght onto to the aircraft, makes me wonder.

He tracks away from the rest of a tight stick on the jump and by accounts was 5th in the stick, okay maybe the up draft thing , but he's the only one that hits it? What about 6 and 7? They missed it? They left the aircraft seconds apart. Or was Laporte such a cherry jumper that he couldn't track or slip? Seems unlikely since Webb "Knew he was a Jumper." and even the rest of the team with the exception of Webb were not really experianced jumpers for that kind od a mission i.e. night into jungle, yet they closed their stick with realitive ease, the trouble was on landing.

The accounts of a Vietnamese wife and possibly a child and his interest in Vietnamese culture can point to a certain degree of Asiatic inclination, that said if that was is problem and his wish was to desert he could have walked away into Da Nang and disappeared.

The reports by Andy Finlayson I find hard to discount as feeding the rumor mill. Finlayson doesn't have an axe to grind really, if he says he saw the reports , I believe him.
 
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