Burer was POW in Vietnam almost 7 years (Arthur Burer)

George Coker: A story of perseverance

It was supposed to be a routine mission, a “milk run” in the words of George Coker, who was serving on his 55th missions in Vietnam as a bombardier/navigator. Usually, his missions consisted of flying over Vietnam from the aircraft carrier USS Constellation and bombing strategic points like bridges and

The Bomber Pilots Like Their Work (The enlisted men are not so gung‐ho) (James Souder)

EACH day for the past year, when the clouds aren’t too thick overhead, the North Vietnamese soldiers, drivers and engineers who travel the Ho Chi Minh trail down southern Laos can expect to witness the same thing. With the trucks pulled over and covered with branches, and the gasoline stored

Beloit’s native son, Vietnam POW shares heart and soul of defending freedom (Ron Mastin)

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

‘Political Basketball’: The Strange Tale Of Captured US POW’s, 1968(Ralph McCullough)

Weeks after arriving in Vietnam in 1968, Korean War veteran Sergeant First Class Floyd Wilmoth- who enlisted in the US Army in 1953- stepped aboard the river vessel LCU1577 ‘Sunset Strip’. Days later, Wilmouth and his crew were unwittingly embroiled in an international incident between Cambodia and the United States.

Ex-POW recalls Hainan Island (Phillip Smith)

News of the emergency landing of a U.S. spy plane on China’s Hainan Island is giving flashbacks to a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who spent 7-1/2 years as a POW in China. It was on that island that Philip Smith spent his first hours after he was shot down