Retired Air Force Col. Robert Certain was a navigator on the first B-52 shot down during Operation Linebacker II.
In 1967, there was a “unit” of approximately 300 Americans fighting the Vietnam Warfrom within a Hanoi prison. The unit—later named the 4th Allied POW Wing—waslocated in the drab North Vietnamese capital. Within this unit, every man had thesame job: prisoner of war.All—except three enlisted airmen—were officers, including me. Our
When 2nd Lt. John “Spike” Nasmyth climbed into his F-4 Phantom II on Sept. 4, 1966, to fly a combat mission over Vietnam, he never foresaw that he’d be blown out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile. The last words he heard before his jet was transformed into a
Only a month earlier, they were prisoners of war. Since their release, Navy Lieut. Robert Frishman and Seaman Douglas Hegdahl have been recuperating at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The third released P.W., Air Force Captain Wesley Rumble, 26, whose fighter-bomber went down over Quang Binh province in
You can’t breath because your chest is compressed during the process,” Captain Peter Schoeffel explains. He’s talking about being tortured by the communist North Vietnamese, who were trying to force captured American military personnel to talk. Schoeffel, a retired navy pilot living in Jacksonville, tells about his experience as a
Stephen Anthony Rudloff, Commander, United States Navy (Retired) who survived 323 days in captivity as a POW during the Vietnam War, passed away peacefully following a long illness the evening of Memorial Day, May 31, 2021, at his home on Nelson Avenue surrounded by family. He was 76. Born February