On October 26, 1967, McCain was flying as part of a 20-plane attack against a thermal power plant in central Hanoi, a heavily defended target area that had previously been off-limits to U.S. raids.[33][34] McCain’s A-4 Skyhawk was shot down by a Soviet-made SA-2 anti-aircraft missile[34] while pulling up after dropping its bombs.[35]
McCain fractured both arms and a leg in being hit and ejecting from his plane. [36] He nearly drowned after he parachuted into Truc Bach Lake in Hanoi.[33] After he regained consciousness, a mob gathered around him, spat on him, kicked him and stripped him of his clothing.[37]
Others crushed his shoulder with the butt of a rifle and bayoneted him in his left foot and abdominal area; he was then transported to Hanoi’s main prison.[37] Although badly wounded, his captors refused to put him in the hospital, deciding he would soon die anyway; they beat and interrogated him, but McCain only offered his name, rank, serial number, and date of birth.[37]
Only when the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a top admiral did they give him medical care[37] and announce his capture; at this point, two days after it went down, McCain’s plane going missing and his subsequent appearance as a POW made the front page of The New York Times.[30]
McCain spent six weeks in a hospital, receiving marginal care, was interviewed by a French television reporter whose report was carried on CBS, and was observed by a variety of North Vietnamese, including the famous General Vo Nguyen Giap, many of whom assumed that he must be part of America’s political-military-economic elite.[37]
Now having lost 50 pounds, in a chest cast, and with his hair turned white,[33] McCain was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Hanoi in December 1967, into a cell with two other Americans who did not expect him to live a week (one was Bud Day, a future Medal of Honor recipient); they nursed McCain and kept him alive.[38]
In March 1968, McCain was put into solitary confinement, where he would be for two years.[37] In July 1968, McCain’s father was named Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), stationed in Honolulu and commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater.[3] McCain was immediately offered a chance to return home early:[33] the North Vietnamese wanted a mercy-showing propaganda coup for the outside world, and a message that only privilege mattered that they could use against the other POWs.[37]
McCain turned down the offer of repatriation due to the Code of Conduct of “first in, first out”: he would only accept the offer if every man taken in before him was released as well.[39] McCain’s refusal to be released was even remarked upon by North Vietnamese officials to U.S. envoy Averell Harriman at the ongoing Paris Peace Talks.[33]
In August 1968, a program of vigorous torture methods began on McCain, using rope bindings into painful positions and beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery.[37][33] Teeth and bones were broken again as was McCain’s spirit; the beginnings of a suicide attempt was stopped by guards.[33]
After four days of this, McCain signed an anti-American propaganda “confession” that said he was a “black criminal” and an “air pirate”,[33] although he used stilted Communist jargon and ungrammatical language to signal the statement was forced.[40] He would later write, “I had learned what we all learned over there: Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine.”[37]
His injuries to this day have left him incapable of raising his arms above his head.[41] His captors tried to force him to sign a second statement, and this time he refused. He received two to three beatings per week because of his continued refusal.[42] Other American POWs were similarly tortured and maltreated in order to extract “confessions”.[37]
On one occasion when McCain was physically coerced to give the names of members of his squadron, he supplied them the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line.[40]
On another occasion, a guard surreptitiously loosened McCain’s painful rope bindings for a night; when he later saw McCain on Christmas Day, he stood next to McCain and silently drew a cross in the dirt with his foot[43] (decades later, McCain would relate this Good Samaritan story during his presidential campaigns, as a testament to faith and humanity[44][45]).
McCain refused to meet with various anti-war peace groups coming to Hanoi, such as those led by David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, and Rennie Davis, not wanting to give either them or the North Vietnamese a propaganda victory based on his connection to his father.[37]
In October 1969, treatment of McCain and the other POWs suddenly improved, after a badly beaten and weakened POW who had been released that summer disclosed to the world press the conditions to which they were being subjected.[37] In December 1969, McCain was transferred to Hoa Loa Prison, which later became famous via its POW nickname of the “Hanoi Hilton”.[37]
McCain continued to refuse to see anti-war groups or journalists sympathetic to the North Vietnamese regime;[37] to one visitor who did speak with him, McCain later wrote, “I told him I had no remorse about what I did, and that I would do it over again if the same opportunity presented itself.”[37] McCain and other prisoners were moved around to different camps at times, but conditions over the next several years were generally more tolerable than they had been before.[37]
Altogether McCain was held as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for five and a half years. The Paris Peace Accords were signed on January 27, 1973, ending direct U.S. involvement in the war, but the Operation Homecoming arrangements for POWs took longer; McCain was finally released from captivity on March 15, 1973,[46] having been a POW for almost an extra five years due to his refusal to accept the out-of-sequence repatriation offer.[47]
McCain’s military service is highly commendable, but it should not give him a pass for what he’s doing now...
Hugh Hewitt just said that McCain and Huckabee have left Michigan - no pleasant concession speeches tonight after Romney is declared the winner.
Not very classy!
Thanks for graciously defending McCain’s service. Very well done.
I may not agree with the man on many things, but he has my gratitude and unending admiration for his service.
Thanks for the post. I have McCain’s book Faith Of Our Fathers but have never read it.
As I’ve mentioned on other posts, my father was a WWII POW. The Japenese beat him and all of the POW’s mercilessly, and he had the scars to prove it. He would never talk to me about it and I wish he were here today so I could. I digress. McNuts is using his POW status as a political crutch, which I don’t appreciate. Anyone who would even consider being sKerry’s VP does not have my respect nor support. Not to mention McNuts/Feingold, Gang of 14, Shamnesty, etc.