
John McCain on the horrors he endured as a POW
“I thought perhaps I was going to die,” McCain told ABC’s Sam Donaldson in a 1999 interview when describing being captured and tortured by the Vietcong.

“I thought perhaps I was going to die,” McCain told ABC’s Sam Donaldson in a 1999 interview when describing being captured and tortured by the Vietcong.


Commander George Coker was one of the “Alcatraz 11,” a group considered by the North Vietnamese to be the resistance leadership, even though he was a junior officer. The Alcatraz 11 were moved from Hao Lo to a separate facility “Alcatraz” in 1967. Among them were Jim Stockdale and Bob Shumaker. Like Shumaker, Coker was a key communications link in the command structure at Hao Lo and the other Hanoi prisons. He also has the

This extraordinary, declassified U.S. Air Force documentary “Return With Honor” pays tribute to those servicemen who became prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. The film focuses on first hand accounts by POWs who describe their methods of resistance, maintaining mental toughness, and most incredibly the innovative communication techniques they developed and used while held captive. The circa 1973 picture opens with General John P. Flynn (mark 00:20), who spent five years as a POW

Profile of retired Col. Carlyle Harris, a former POW in Vietnam who is credited with introducing the tap code, which the prisoners used to communicate