Stockdale, who was the highest-ranking Navy officer POW in Vietnam, was held there for nearly eight years. Navy Cmdr. James Stockdale exits an A-4 fighter-bomber weeks before being shot down over Vietnam.
Garwood. Robert Russell Garwood (born April 1, 1946) is a former United States Marine. Often cited as the last verified American prisoner of war (POW) from the Vietnam War, Garwood was captured on September 28, 1965 by Việt Cộng forces near Da Nang, Quang Nam Province.
Commander Everett Alvarez, Jr., was the first American aviator taken captive in Vietnam after being shot down near Hanoi.
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency lists 684 POWs returned home alive from the Vietnam War — the majority after the U.S. pulled out of the war in 1973. (The war officially ended April 30, 1975). There are 1,582 Americans still unaccounted for, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
59 American women who served as civilians (including nurses) in Vietnam were also killed and died in that war. 4 were POWs.
Operation Homecoming was completed on March 29, 1973, when the last of 591 U.S. prisoners were released and returned to the United States.
As a result, Everett Alvarez, a navy pilot who was captured a couple of months after Thompson, was named as the longest held POW when the conflict was finally over. It took several months for the error to be corrected. In 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed and the prisoners were released.
Floyd Thompson, USA Special Forces, POW for nearly nine years, and the longest held prisoner of war in American history. Leo K. Thorsness, USAF pilot, recipient of the Medal of Honor. Humbert Roque Versace, USA Special Forces, first POW to be awarded the Medal Of Honor for actions as a prisoner.
Joseph Alexander became a POW at 15. He was a military and civilian worker at Kelly AFB. Joseph Alexander never got to enjoy his youth. At just 14 years old, and with his grandmother by his side, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, and is said to have been the youngest American prisoner of war.
As the bombing continued, hundreds of American pilots were shot down and captured. Some died in captivity; others were brutally tortured, tied into impossible contortions or just left locked in irons.
The Vietnam War's 200,000 forgotten victims: North Vietnamese prisoners of war. To this day, little is known in the West about the fate of the more than 200,000 Vietnamese prisoners of war who fell into the hands of the Americans and their allies. Many became victims of the increasingly brutal Vietnam War.
Roy P. Benavidez, United States Army, who distinguished himself by a series of daring and extremely valorous actions on 2 May 1968 while assigned to Detachment B-56, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, Republic of Vietnam.
Charles Benjamin "Chuck" Mawhinney (born 1949) is a former United States Marine who holds the Corps' record for the most confirmed sniper kills, having recorded 103 confirmed kills and 216 probable kills in 16 months during the Vietnam War.
Robert Lewis Howard (July 11, 1939 – December 23, 2009) was the most highly decorated officer of Vietnam United States Army Special Forces and Medal of Honor recipient of the Vietnam War.
Tran Hung Dao was one of the first great Vietnamese military strategists. His use of guerrilla warfare to harass and eventually defeat a more powerful enemy provided a model for communist guerrilla warfare in the 20th century.
Among the many other well-known American Vietnam veterans in various fields include Fred Smith, the founder of Federal Express; Craig Venter, the biologist who in 2001 announced the successful sequencing of the human genome; Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor who served as the first U.S. Secretary of Homeland ...
Germany's 'Escape-Proof' Castle POW Camp Actually Had the Worst Record for Escapes. Situated just south of Leipzig, Germany, lies Colditz Castle. During World War II, it was used as a prison camp by the German Heer.
Over 22,000 Australians became prisoners of war of the Japanese in south-east Asia.
Using the nursery rhyme “Old McDonald Had a Farm” as a mnemonic device, he memorized over 250 prisoners' names. When the Vietnamese decided to release three prisoners from the camp, Douglas didn't want to go.
North Vietnam acknowledged that 55 American servicemen and 7 civilians died in captivity. During the war, POWs in Hanoi prisons endeavoured to maintain a registry of captive Americans; they concluded that at least 766 POWs entered the system.
According to the U.S. military, McKinley Nolan, an infantryman, was one of only two officially recognized traitors of the Vietnam War. The other was Marine Private Bobby Garwood, the subject of the bestselling book Conversations with the Enemy by Winston Grooms.
The first American POW was captured in 1964, but most airmen were captured as part of Operation Rolling Thunder from 1965 to 1968, with around 800 airmen being captured at this time. The North Vietnamese would release prisoners at various times throughout the late 1960s as negotiations continued with the United States.