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
In an AAFES parking lot at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, rests a plaque dedicated to former POWs from the Vietnam war, including some from the 388th Fighter Wing. It’s easy to walk past plaques, but this one is worth stopping to consider. For nearly a decade before it moved to Hill
A career Air Force officer who was a North Vietnamese prisoner says the United States butted its “nose into somebody else’s business” and that President Nixon could have settled the war for the same terms four years ago. Maj. Hubert K. Flesher, 40 years old, a fighter pilot who spent
There were times I thought the end was coming. That’s how Arthur Neil Black described his captivity after the helicopter he was aboard was shot down over North Vietnam on Sept. 20, 1965, while on a rescue mission for the U.S. Air Force. “It was a very scary situation,” he
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
South Vietnam claims victory near Dak To. Casualties reported United States evacuates 4 fire bases near Saigon for lack of activity. United States helicopter finds Army sergeant Kenneth Gregory wandering in Vietnam jungle Friday Viet Cong claim they released him. Gregory now at Fort Sill, OK.