Charles “Chuck” Jackson has little memory of the crushing sound of metal as his F-4 Phantom II broke apart.
What he does remember most is the split second before ejecting.
A heat-seeking missile, about 6 to 8 feet long, fired by a pursuing North Vietnamese MIG-21 went right up the two-seater’s jet exhaust while he and pilot Lt. James McCarty were on their return trip home from a bombing mission north of Hanoi.
The engineered violence U.S. Air Force pilots Ron Mastin and Tom Storey felt ejecting from an F-4 Phantom at 500 miles per hour was more shocking than impact of North Vietnamese ordinance that sent their jet crashing to the ground on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. On Mastin’s 34th aerial reconnaissance
Retired U.S. Navy Commander and decorated war hero Glenn Daigle, 75, makes his home in Texas, but there’s no denying his Louisiana roots.
On this date in 1973, the Viet Cong released First Lieutenant Richard Bates of the U.S. Air Force. While flying a mission nearly 6 months before, he was shot down over North Vietnam and taken prisoner. Bates was from Plaza, ND, and was 24 when he was captured.
Five decades after surviving a year as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, the St. Joe’s graduate and former head of the Office of Veterans Services is being recognized for a lifetime of giving back.
Richard Wayne “Dick” Mullen was idolized by his family. He grew up during the 1950s and early 1960s in the Fairmount neighborhood near Wichita State University in a time when everybody knew everybody. He learned early what it was like to feel a passion for his country – and why