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 three American pilots freed by North Vietnam and their escort of antiwar leaders arrived from Copenhagen last night at Kennedy International Airport, and the three — after a 25‐minute shouting match aboard the parked Scandina vian Airlines System plane— were taken by Defense Depart ment officials to military hos
Retired Air Force Col. Robert Certain was a navigator on the first B-52 shot down during Operation Linebacker II.
John Murphy was about 15,000 feet in the air when his vision came back to him. He was also in free fall and still strapped to the ejector seat of the F4 E Phantom fighter-bomber that moments earlier he had been piloting on a mission over North Vietnam before the
It was December 26, 1972. The vibration from bombs exploding in the distance resonated through the walls of the North Vietnamese prison. In his cell, an American pilot peered through the barred windows where he saw the silhouette of a B-52 Stratofortress in flames. He could only watch as the
Fifty years ago, in early March 1973, Capt. James Patrick Walsh Jr. received a hero’s welcome here. Walsh, an aviator with Attack Squadron 211, Marine Air Group 12, logged an entry on Sept. 26, 1972, that stated it was his 100th takeoff for a bombing run over North Vietnam. There