This extraordinary film about American POWs is one of a series of “Air Force Now” magazine type movies made for the U.S. Air Force in the 1970s and 1980s. This particular episode focuses on the return of Prisoners of War (POWs) from Vietnam after the war. It was apparently made in either late 1973 or early 1974, after Operation Homecoming took place. Operation Homecoming took place from February 14, 1973 to April of that year, and involved the return of 591 American prisoners of war held by North Vietnam. Homecoming was a negotiated part of the Paris Peace Accords that ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
The Incredible Stoicism of Admiral James Stockdale
On September 9, 1965, Admiral James Stockdale’s A-4 Skyhawk jet was shot down in Vietnam. He was taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese and spent the next seven years being tortured and subjected to unimaginable loneliness and terror. Fortunately, three years earlier, he was recommended a book. That book, he says, saved his life. After twenty years in the navy, Stockdale decided to go back to school. He enrolled in a two-year graduate program at
