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.”
Dozens attended a funeral service at Barrancas National Cemetery (BNC) onboard Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola May 16 for retired Cmdr. Ralph Ellis Gaither Jr., a naval aviator well-known in the Pensacola community as a Vietnam veteran and Prisoner of War (POW) who had exemplified defiance while in enemy hands.
SFC Harry L. Ettmueller, USA, was the Chief Engineer at Hue, 1967-68. He was captured by the North Vietnamese during the TET ’68 offensive on February 5, 1968 and remained a POW until March 5, 1973.I have not been able to find Harry’s obituary, which is what I would normally
Jack Van Loan, an Oregon native and fighter pilot who spent six years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and then served for 20 years as executive director of the Five Points Association in Columbia, has died. He was 87. “He was a mentor,
Five released prisoners of war landed at Kennedy International Airport last evening for joyous reunions. Two others were greeted by a crowd of 2,000 at Fort Monmouth, N. J. The Kennedy homecoming celebration began shortly before 7 o’clock when an Air Force Nightingale medical‐evacuation plane touched down and taxied to
John McCain, the Arizona Senator who died on Saturday, lived much of his life in the public political eye — but Americans started to learn about his famous courage at a time he was notably absent. The saga began 51 years ago. As TIME reported in 1967, North Vietnamese planes had, for the first