The morning he flew his 266th mission over Vietnam, Air Force Capt. Tony Marshall only knew the pilot in the seat in front of him, Capt. Steve Cuthbert, by reputation. Tall and thin with a shock of sandy blond hair, Cuthbert never suffered a lack of confidence flying the F-4 Phantom.
“He told me he would never be captured when shot down,” Capt. Ross Detwiler, another pilot, later wrote, recalling a conversation the night before a malfunction sent Cuthbert’s plane to the ground in 1972
1,882 days; five and a half years. That’s how long Vietnam veteran Wayne Smith was a prisoner of war. “We were in pretty bad shape, we certainly were,” said Smith. He shared his story with us and dozens of people at Punta Gorda’s Military Heritage Museum. The Air Force captain’s
Retired U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Paul Montague enlisted in 1952. Sixteen years later, on March 28, 1968, he was captured by the Vietnamese armed forces, the Viet Cong. The helicopter pilot was flying his CH-46 Sea Knight when he was shot down trying to pick up a recovery team that
Myron Donald grew up on a corner of his grandfather’s farm Moravia in central New York. His father was a carpenter; his mother a housewife. He has two brothers and a sister. In high school, he played football, baseball and basketball and was president of the Student Council. He graduated
Retired Navy Capt. Collins Henry Haines refers to the years 1967 to 1973 as the time he spent in jail. Between June 8, 1967, and March 3, 1973, Haines, an F-8 Crusader pilot, was moved between a series of North Vietnamese prisoner camps, where he endured torture, disease and isolation. “We