How Naval Aviator Charles Klusmann escaped a vicious POW camp

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 fight during the Vietnam War and his escape from a communist prison camp in Laos. During his service, Chuck was deployed to the Gulf of Tonkin, as President Lyndon B. Johnson had ordered Klusmann and other Kitty Hawk aviators to gather intelligence information against the North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops in Laos.

Other Publications You Might Be Interested In

Ex POW’s Mull Lessons (Raymond Vissotzky)

When the agony ended and everyone had told his story of horror, did anything come out of the tragedy that could be a lesson to others? That is the question being studied by a team of ex-prisoners of war, led by Col. Raymond W. Vissotzky, at the Survival School at

Read More »