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Navy SEAL Officer Is Finally Honored

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The Baltimore Sun

Published: February 26, 2008

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Navy Lt. Melvin Spence Dry dropped out of a helicopter into choppy waters off the coast of North Vietnam in June 1972. On a classified mission to rescue two escaped U.S. prisoners of war, he died the moment he hit the water.

But because the mission was top-secret, Dry's valor went officially unrecognized. No medals, commendations, place of honor among the fallen at the Naval Academy.

Even his parents were told he died in a training exercise.

But his father, also an academy graduate, never bought that explanation. He spent the rest of his life seeking the truth and arguing for his son to be honored, a cause picked up by Dry's classmates after the father died in 1997.

Monday, in a ceremony attended by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Dry was awarded the Bronze Star posthumously. Navy officials at the event could not recall the last time someone received the award so long after the person's death.

"This gathering here today fulfills my parents' greatest wish," Dry's brother, Robert, told about 200 people gathered inside Memorial Hall.

Dry, a 1968 Naval Academy graduate who died at 26, was the last member of the elite Navy SEALs to die during the Vietnam War, officials said.

It wasn't until July 2005, when the publication Proceedings printed an article by two of Dry's former Naval Academy classmates, that the circumstances of his death were revealed.

After reading the story, a Navy officer who was part of the rescue operation submitted the application for Dry to be awarded the Bronze Star.

The story of Dry's death began in early 1972, when U.S. airmen held as prisoners of war at the infamous Hanoi Hilton began planning an escape, according to Proceedings. They planned to steal a boat and travel down the Red River to the Gulf of Tonkin.

When military officials learned of the escape plans through intelligence operations, they sent Navy SEALs on a rescue mission called Operation Thunderhead. Dry commanded the team's Platoon Alpha that was assigned to carry out the mission.

Dry and about a dozen SEALs headed out to sea aboard the submarine USS Grayback. Once close enough to the coast, Dry and other SEALs were to head for a small island off the mouth of the Red River in a mini-submarine attached to the Grayback, set up an observation post and look for the escaped prisoners, according to Proceedings.

The SEALs never made it to the island. During a reconnaissance mission one evening, the minisub ran out of battery power, and Dry and three other SEALs had to abandon it. They treaded water several miles off the coast for eight hours, until rescued by helicopter the next morning and taken to the command ship, Proceedings said.

Dry insisted on returning to the Grayback to help in the rescue. A helicopter took Dry and three SEALs to the Grayback the night of June 5.

The helicopter had trouble finding the submerged Grayback and determining its altitude. After several failed attempts, the helicopter crew thought it saw the submarine. When Dry received the signal, he jumped.

The helicopter, caught in strong winds, was too high - about 40 to 50 feet - for a safe jump, witnesses said. Three others who jumped were injured. Dry's body was found that night. The Navy listed the cause of death as "severe trauma to the neck."

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