Captured and at the mercy of an increasingly cruel enemy, German-born US Navy pilot Dieter Dengler was left with no choice but to attempt a daring escape from the Pathet Lao prison camp in which he was being held during the Vietnam War. The fateful decision was made only after he and six other POWs had overheard plans to get rid of them as soon as the guards ran out of food. Dieter would choose
Commander George Coker was one of the “Alcatraz 11,” a group considered by the North Vietnamese to be the resistance leadership, even though he was a junior officer. The Alcatraz 11 were moved from Hao Lo to a separate facility “Alcatraz” in 1967. Among them were Jim Stockdale and Bob Shumaker. Like Shumaker, Coker was a key communications link in the command structure at Hao Lo and the other Hanoi prisons. He also has the
Major Joe Crecca, a veteran of the Air Force remembers in vivid detail the November day in 1966 when his F-4 was shot down.
Although the Vietnam conflict lasted for 20 years – from 1955 to the Fall of Saigon in 1975 – the United States government never officially declared war. Over 3 million people perished in the conflict, and hundreds of American and Vietnamese citizens were held in prison camps as unofficial POWs. The North Vietnamese captured American troops and the South Vietnamese held hundreds of North Vietnamese soldiers. These POWs were treated in different but perhaps equally
Jeff’s guest is Captain Allen Brady, author of “Witnessing the American Century: Via Berlin, Pearl Harbor, Vietnam and the Straits of Florida”, a US Naval Aviator’s odyssey through pivotal moments in 20th-century history. As a youngster, Captain Brady watched the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. As a pilot, the Naval Academy graduate was shot down over North Vietnam and spent six years as POW. The rise of Adolf Hitler, America’s Great Depression in the heartland, the
