STOCKDALE SHOOT-DOWN

The cockpit clock in his A-4 Skyhawk read 1210 as he pushed over toward a line of railroad cars at 400 knots.  Bad weather over Vinh, North Vietnam, had forced a diversion to this familiar secondary target, a rail siding near Tinh Gia, 60 miles further up the North Vietnamese coast.  CDR James B. Stockdale had visited here frequently–a secondary target considered by most pilots in the squadron to be a low-risk milk-run.  And after this last mission of ORISKANY’s (CV-31) busy 30-day line period at Yankee Station, Stockdale and his wingman, CDR Wynne Foster, could count on a well-deserved R&R in Hong Kong.

Stockdale pickled his “snake-eye” (retarded fall) bombs and watched the rail cars splinter in his rear-view mirror.  But now his ears became aware of an unexpected sound, the booming of a newly placed, well-positioned, 57 mm anti-aircraft gun firing at point blank range up his tail.  He felt his Skyhawk lurch with each impact and watched his cockpit indicators come alive.  Hydraulics out.  Fire aboard.  Then no response from the controls.  Though he could see the ocean just three miles distant, it was apparent his plane was fatally hit.  By now the G-forces in the tumbling plane prevented Stockdale from reaching the overhead ejection loop.  He grabbed instead for the lever between his legs and–WHAM!–the canopy was gone.  Stockdale pitched through the air, away from his disintegrating craft.

He landed in a tree bordering the north-south “Highway 1” and dangled momentarily while he worked free of the parachute harness.  On the ground he was immediately massed upon by several hundred locals who welcomed this opportunity to vent their pent-up frustrations over US bombings.  Stockdale was beaten and stripped of his clothing until an official-looking man in a pith hat calmed the crowd.  He was then loaded onto a flatbed truck for transport to Hanoi.  He now noticed his left arm hung limp at his side and his left lower leg was displaced 60^o outboard.

Thus began seven and a half years of torture and deprivation at the hands of the North Vietnamese.  As the senior officer among the POWs at the Hoa Lo prison, Stockdale quickly organized his fellow prisoners in resistance.  Incurring punishment for doing so, he promoted a “tap code” system of prisoner communication.  The scant correspondence he was permitted to his wife back home contained encoded information about fellow prisoners at the “Hanoi Hilton.”  On one occasion he self-inflicted facial wounds to avoid becoming the subject of TV propaganda.  Universally admired by his fellow POWs, for his unparalleled bravery during his detainment, Stockdale was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  14 SEP 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Stockdale, James and Sybil Stockdale.  In Love & War:  The Story of a Family’s Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam Years.  Harper & Row, New York, NY, 1984.

United States Congress.  United States of America’s Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients and their Official Citations.  Columbia Heights, MN: Highland House II, 1994, pp. 146-47.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The tap code employed by the prisoners of the “Hanoi Hilton” was based on a five-by-five grid in which 25 letters of the alphabet were arrayed.  Correspondents would spell words one letter at a time by tapping first the row, then the column of each letter.  The letter “k” was dropped (substituted with “c”) to make 25 letters.

For example, the word “kite” would be communicated with the following series of taps:  1 (pause) 3; 2 (pause) 4; 4 (pause) 4; 1 (pause) 5.

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