William “Bill” Talley was eating lunch in the cafeteria at his senior living center one day in June when a man walked up to him.
This was the man’s greeting: “Hey, I’m Jim Null. I remember when you got shot down.”
U.S. Air Force pilots Talley, 88, and Null, 77, were both in the air above Vietnam on May 11, 1972, as part of a bombing mission.
Their days started when their planes took off. Null’s day ended when he landed his plane. Talley’s day ended when his was shot down.
Charles “Chuck” Jackson has little memory of the crushing sound of metal as his F-4 Phantom II broke apart. What he does remember most is the split second before ejecting. A heat-seeking missile, about 6 to 8 feet long, fired by a pursuing North Vietnamese MIG-21 went right up the
T he picture on the Time magazine cover for April 23, 1965, was Air Force Lt. Col. Robinson Risner. The cover story, “The Fighting American,” featured 10 US military members in Vietnam, with fighter pilot Risner—a rising star in the Air Force—foremost among them.“At the time it was a great
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