Jay Hess was 14 years into his Air Force service.
The fighter pilot, in the cockpit of an F-105 Thunderchief, was dropping 600 pound bombs in the heavily defended area around Hanoi, in north Vietnam. Hess finished the steep dive, released his bombs and began to pull out when his aircraft was hit by enemy fire. With no way out, he pulled the ejection handle.
The specially modified, intelligence-gathering C-47 plane lifted off from Vientiane, the capital of Laos, March 23, 1961, and headed north toward Xieng Khouangville, a Communist-held area. The experienced Air Force crew was accompanied by Army Maj. Lawrence R. Bailey, a Laurel resident serving as the assistant Army attache in Vientiane.
The Communists freed 49 more American prisoners in Hanoi yesterday, including a charter pilot held since 1965, one of the civilian American prisoners held Iongest by the Vietcong. Also among the men freed were nine Americans and Canadian missionary captured in Laos. Two big flying hospitals brought the men from
Ironically, Cavaiani should never have been in Vietnam in the first place. Born in Britain in 1943, he immigrated to the United States in 1947. When American involvement in Vietnam was ramping up in the late 1960s, he discovered that he was considered medically unfit to serve because he was
March 29 is National Vietnam War Veterans Day. Two years ago, we were fortunate to receive a donation from the son of CAPT Kay Russell, a naval aviator who served time in a North Vietnamese POW (prisoner of war) camp. When I first saw the shirt he wore as a