Episode Details

The Rescue of Streetcar 304: A Navy Pilot’s forty hours on the run in Laos

In 1968, Navy Lt. Kenny Fields boarded the aircraft carrier USS America and set sail for the Gulf of Tonkin to join the air war against North Vietnam. On his first combat mission, Kenny was shot down following a bomb run. Enemy troops fired at him as he floated down in his parachute and continued to doggedly chase him during the next thirty-nine hours. Thus began one of the largest and most dramatic air rescue efforts of the Vietnam War. After 189 rescue sorties and the loss of seven planes, one pilot was rescued, another was captured and detained as a prisoner of war for over five years. We talk with Kenny Fields about his book that took thirty-five years to write.