It was Nov. 7, 1967 and U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Leon Ellis was co-piloting an F-4C Phantom over North Vietnam when his aircraft was suddenly hit by enemy fire. It exploded into pieces and was quickly tumbling to the ground.
He managed to eject safely, but found himself parachuting into the same enemy territory he was attacking – not a good situation. He was almost immediately surrounded by North Vietnamese soldiers and captured.
Charles Frederic Klusmann was a Naval Aviator born on September 7, 1933, in San Diego, California. He joined the U.S. Naval Reserve on February 23, 1952, and began active service on March 18, 1953. Lieutenant Chuck is known for his extraordinary heroism and achievement for his role in the aerial
As U.S. prisoners of war in Iraq await their freedom, Col. Charles Brown, 439th Maintenance Group commander here recalled the end of his own POW experience 30 years earlier. On April 1, 1973, a young, Captain Brown walked off a C-9 Nightingale onto the tarmac here after spending 101 days
Douglas Hegdahl was born on September 3, 1946 in Clark, South Dakota. Being from a small town, Douglas once joked with a reporter that he’d “never been east of [his] uncles’ Dairy Queen stand in Glenwood, Minnesota or west of [his] aunt’s house in Phoenix, Arizona.” So when a military
50 years ago, direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War officially ended as the last remaining combat troops and prisoners of war returned to American soil. It was a complex moment for the country, as the war was deeply unpopular and ended in defeat. More than 58,000 Americans died in the war,
