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.”
When I worked in the Pentagon several years ago, I had the honor and privilege of working for Brig. Gen. David “Bull” Baker. Baker was a colorful character — I could always hear him coming long before I saw him. He was loud, good-natured and powerful and had earned the
AMONG thousands of names etched on the cold black-marble wall of the Vietnam War Memorial is that of Air Force Maj. Robert Harry Irwin. To find him, go to Panel 2-West, Line 107, near the center and close to the bottom of the wall. Next to his name, where there
On June 24, 1972, U.S. Air Force Captain David B. Grant was flying a mission couple posing for picturefrom Thailand into conflict-ridden North Vietnam when his F-4 Phantom took a direct hit and exploded. The fuselage was separating when both Grant and his “back-seater,” Bill, ejected through the fireball. They
You can’t breath because your chest is compressed during the process,” Captain Peter Schoeffel explains. He’s talking about being tortured by the communist North Vietnamese, who were trying to force captured American military personnel to talk. Schoeffel, a retired navy pilot living in Jacksonville, tells about his experience as a
Bill McMurry recently spoke to SaddleBrooke Sunrise Rotary about his experience as a POW in North Vietnam. He was captured on February 7, 1968 after helping defend the Lang Vei Special Forces surveillance camp in the northwestern corner of South Vietnam, about one and a half miles from the Laotian