John Murphy was about 15,000 feet in the air when his vision came back to him. He was also in free fall and still strapped to the ejector seat of the F4 E Phantom fighter-bomber that moments earlier he had been piloting on a mission over North Vietnam before the
Fred Flom, a Menasha native and a pilot who spent more than six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has died. Flom died June 23, according to his obituary. He was 80 years old. Flom grew up in Menasha as the youngest of four children. His family lived on
Born on Chicago’s South Side in 1940, John Borling seemed headed for a military career at an early age. Inspired by his uncle’s service in World War II as a B-24 navigator, and a weekend visit to West Point as a high school junior, Borling applied to all three academies
On Oct. 17, 1967, Chico native Tony Andrews was a 27-year-old Air Force pilot, flying F-105 fighter bombers over Vietnam. Before that day was over his life would change forever, and he would attain a status he happily would have turned down.
Navy Lt. Brad Smith was on a bombing run to destroy a bridge in North Vietnam when he was shot down in 1966. He didn’t see what ripped into his A-4 Skyhawk, but he saw the ground approaching at 600 mph as his crippled jet nose-dived toward the ground. Smith