Ronald J. Webb was commissioned a 2d Lt in the U.S. Air Force on January 22, 1960, through the Air Force ROTC program while he attended Indiana University. He would serve five years in the Air Force as a navigator, before an opportunity allowed him to earn his pilot wings in June 1966. Webb served as an F-4 pilot with the 390th Tactical Fighter Squadron at DaNang AB, South Vietnam beginning in March 1967. On his 44th mission over Vietnam, Webb was involved in a freak mid-air collision and was forced to eject over North Vietnam. On June 11, 1967 Webb was taken as a Prisoner of war and would spend the next 2,094 days in captivity. For nearly six years he would survive interrogations, physical abuse, and malnutrition at Hỏa Lò Prison, known to American POWs as the “Hanoi Hilton”. Major Webb would finally be released during Operation Homecoming on March 4, 1973.
Captain Allen Brady
Jeff’s guest is Captain Allen Brady, author of “Witnessing the American Century: Via Berlin, Pearl Harbor, Vietnam and the Straits of Florida”, a US Naval Aviator’s odyssey through pivotal moments in 20th-century history. As a youngster, Captain Brady watched the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. As a pilot, the Naval Academy graduate was shot down over North Vietnam and spent six years as POW. The rise of Adolf Hitler, America’s Great Depression in the heartland, the
