On Oct. 17, 1967, Chico native Tony Andrews was a 27-year-old Air Force pilot, flying F-105 fighter bombers over Vietnam. Before that day was over his life would change forever, and he would attain a status he happily would have turned down.
Retired Navy Capt. Collins Henry Haines refers to the years 1967 to 1973 as the time he spent in jail. Between June 8, 1967, and March 3, 1973, Haines, an F-8 Crusader pilot, was moved between a series of North Vietnamese prisoner camps, where he endured torture, disease and isolation. “We
Call it fate, chance or even a divine appointment. A woman just happened to come across the name of the man whose POW bracelet she wore 40 years ago. When the two got the chance to meet, she called it an answer to prayer. Jerry Singleton didn’t know when he
On Oct. 25, 1967, now retired Lt. Col. Richard Smith and his wingmen had orders to bomb the Paul Doumer Bridge in North Vietnam; the bridge was a mile long and one of the most heavily defended positions in Southeast Asia. Smith said that leading up to the mission, he
The bombing started on Dec. 18, 1972 and lasted 11 days. Waves of B-52s dropped 20,000 tons of ordnance on and near the North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong. For the nearly 600 American POWs held by the North Vietnamese, the destruction wreaked by Operation