Thomas Collins III would like to clarify one point about his bombing missions in Vietnam, and the more than seven years he spent as a prisoner of war:
It was not a mistake, not a waste, not a failure.
“We needed to stop communism,” says Collins, 74, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel. “It was a good mission. We needed to nip that in the bud, and we did. Actually, Vietnam was successful. We stopped communism.”
The Air & Space Forces Association recognized American prisoners of war during its 2023 Air, Space & Cyber Conference, as part of the association’s ongoing commemoration of the end of the Vietnam War. Of some 170 individuals who appeared on stage throughout the three-day conference in National Harbor, Md., five
Charles G. Boyd, who died on Wednesday at eighty-three years old, was a true American hero and patriot. Chuck, as he liked to be called, was the sole prisoner of war (POW) from Vietnam, where he was held captive for almost seven years, to attain the rank of four-star general. Throughout his
Col. Al Brunstrom of the U.S. Air Force, retired, 83, describes how he was shot down in Vietnam in the RF-101 (Voodoo) he was flying, on a scale model of the aircraft, at his home in the Woods and Lakes community near Ocklawaha, Fla. on Tuesday, August 5, 2014. Brunstrom
First Lt. Jerry Driscoll was 10 miles north of his target in Hanoi, North Vietnam, when the tail of his F-105 fighter jet was struck by anti-aircraft fire. Flying at 600 mph, the plane ignited and began to roll. He ejected at 1,000 feet. Driscoll was on his 112th mission,
As U.S. prisoners of war in Iraq await their freedom, Col. Charles Brown, 439th Maintenance Group commander here recalled the end of his own POW experience 30 years earlier. On April 1, 1973, a young, Captain Brown walked off a C-9 Nightingale onto the tarmac here after spending 101 days