Larry Spencer was born and raised in Earlham, Iowa. He joined the Navy in 1963 and became an F-4 Phantom backseater. He was over the Gulf of Tonkin on February 18, 1966 when his plane was shot down. Larry spent the next 7 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. This story explains how he endured the uncertainty of his situation by keeping a positive attitude and above all, his faith.
This extraordinary film about American POWs is one of a series of “Air Force Now” magazine type movies made for the U.S. Air Force in the 1970s and 1980s. This particular episode focuses on the return of Prisoners of War (POWs) from Vietnam after the war. It was apparently made in either late 1973 or early 1974, after Operation Homecoming took place. Operation Homecoming took place from February 14, 1973 to April of that year,
Major Joe Crecca, a Vietnam Prisoner of War, shared his story with airmen on Ramstein for POW/MIA week. Major Crecca was help prisoner in Hanoi, Vietnam for 2,280 days.
On November 17, 2013 Robert Wideman sat down and told of his experiences in the Vietnam War. Robert, born in Montreal, Canada and raised in upstate New York and Cleveland, OH, served in the Navy. A pilot, he flew 120+ missions into Vietnam off the carriers Enterprise and Hancock. On May 6, 1967, his plane was shot down over North Vietnam and Robert became a POW for the next six years. In this clip, he
Excerpts from an Oct. 20, 2019 interview with Col. Ken Cordier, a former United States Air Force pilot who was an American prisoner of war in North Vietnam for 6 years, 3 months and 2 days during the Vietnam War. This is part of the Robert H. Jackson Center’s Defenders of Freedom project. For further information see www.roberthjacskon.org.
