Duane W. Martin

In the 2007 film Rescue Dawn, which told the story from Dengler's point of view, Martin was portrayed by actor Steve Zahn.

After learning that the starving Pathet Lao guards planned on killing them and staging their bodies so that the killings looked like an escape, the prisoners decided to attempt an escape. On June 29, 1966, while the guards were eating, the group slipped out of their hand and foot restraints and grabbed the guard's unattended weapons. The Pathet Lao guards spotted some of the other prisoners trying to escape. Dengler fired at a machete wielding guard and Phisit Intharathat killed the other guards. Phisit, in his own account, says he killed one guard as he reached for his rifle and says three in total were killed and the rest ran away. The seven prisoners split into three groups: Dengler and Martin, who headed for the Mekong River to escape to Thailand; Phisit and the two other Thai prisoners; and DeBruin stayed with To, who had been too ill to continue with the escape.

In 1965, Martin was assigned to Detachment 1 38th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron (38th ARRS), based at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand. On September 20, 1965, Captain Thomas J. Curtis, Martin, Sergeant William A. Robinson crew chief, and Pararescue Specialist (PJ) Arthur Black took off in their Kaman HH-43 Huskie BuNo 62-4510, callsign Dutchy 41 on a combat search and rescue (CSAR) mission for Essex 04, an F-105D piloted by Capt Willis E. Forby, over North Vietnam. The HH-43 was hit by ground fire and crashed in the jungle.

Curtis, Robinson, and Black were all captured by the North Vietnamese Army and taken to a POW camp in North Vietnam. They were later released during Operation Homecoming. Martin, on the other hand was captured by the Pathet Lao and taken to a POW camp in Laos. There, he joined fellow prisoners Eugene DeBruin (American), Phisit Intharathat, Prasit Promsuwan, Prasit Dhanee (all Thai), and Y.C. To (Chinese), who had all been crewmembers on an Air America flight that was shot down in 1963. They were joined in February 1966 by Dieter Dengler.

Duane Whitney Martin (January 2, 1940 – July 3, 1966) was an American Air Force officer and prisoner of war during the Vietnam War.

Martin was born on January 2, 1940, in Denver, Colorado. He became a commissioned officer in the United States Air Force in 1963 and completed his helicopter training in 1964.