It was Nov. 7, 1967 and U.S. Air Force 1st Lt. Leon Ellis was co-piloting an F-4C Phantom over North Vietnam when his aircraft was suddenly hit by enemy fire. It exploded into pieces and was quickly tumbling to the ground.
He managed to eject safely, but found himself parachuting into the same enemy territory he was attacking – not a good situation. He was almost immediately surrounded by North Vietnamese soldiers and captured.
Jay Hess was 14 years into his Air Force service. The fighter pilot, in the cockpit of an F-105 Thunderchief, was dropping 600 pound bombs in the heavily defended area around Hanoi, in north Vietnam. Hess finished the steep dive, released his bombs and began to pull out when his
Joe Milligan knew he had a problem when his North Vietnamese prison guards began wearing handkerchiefs over their faces when they entered his cell. The odor of rotting, infected flesh came from his arms, badly burned after Milligan ejected from his crippled F-4C Phantom and into a fireball. His burns
A former prisoner of war who has been threatened with court‐martial for his behavior in captivity, said tonight that the “pressure of conscience and morality” made him change his mind on the war while in captivity. Capt. Walter E. Wilber of the Navy acknowledged in television interview that he had
When 2nd Lt. John “Spike” Nasmyth climbed into his F-4 Phantom II on Sept. 4, 1966, to fly a combat mission over Vietnam, he never foresaw that he’d be blown out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile. The last words he heard before his jet was transformed into a
During the Vietnam War, there were 725 U.S. Prisoners of War (POWs). Operation Homecoming was a series of diplomatic negotiations that made the return of 591 American prisoners of war held by North Vietnam possible in 1973. The operation was divided into three phases; the first phase required the initial reception of prisoners