Lost or Merely Forgotten?

It was a hot, clear Indochinese afternoon, May 10, 1972, and Navy Commander Harry Lee Blackburn’s F-4 Phantom jet fighter was escorting a bomber strike squadron to Hai Duong, North Vietnam. Blackburn, the pilot, and Lieutenant Steven Rudloff, the backseater, first saw the MiGs approaching after the squadron had passed the target. Blackburn banked at a narrow arc to challenge the MiGs, aiming over the center of Hai Duong. Then the anti-aircraft guns opened up and Blackburn’s plane was hit. The F-4, burning, nosed down in a crash spiral. Rudloff ejected first, followed seconds later by Blackburn. According to the F-4 pilot who was following at Blackburn’s wing, the chutes landed cleanly some two hundred yards apart in the Red River; he heard the beeper sounds which indicated that Rudloff and Blackburn were alive. The area was heavily populated. “The time delay between each ejection strongly indicates that both men were not seriously injured since each was able to eject himself,” says a Navy report sent to Blackburn’s wife and three children.

Rudloff was lucky. Captured immediately, held in Vietnam for the next ten months, he was released in 1973 with the other American POWs during Operation Homecoming. At his debriefing Rudloff said that the North Vietnamese had several times assured him that they had also taken Blackburn prisoner. But Blackburn, dead or alive, has never returned to the United States.

PG

About the Author

Paul Gigot

Featured Tags

Manage following

Vietnam

Department of Defense

It was a hot, clear Indochinese afternoon, May 10, 1972, and Navy Commander Harry Lee Blackburn’s F-4 Phantom jet fighter was escorting a bomber strike squadron to Hai Duong, North Vietnam. Blackburn, the pilot, and Lieutenant Steven Rudloff, the backseater, first saw the MiGs approaching after the squadron had passed the target. Blackburn banked at a narrow arc to challenge the MiGs, aiming over the center of Hai Duong. Then the anti-aircraft guns opened up and Blackburn’s plane was hit. The F-4, burning, nosed down in a crash spiral. Rudloff ejected first, followed seconds later by Blackburn. According to the F-4 pilot who was following at Blackburn’s wing, the chutes landed cleanly some two hundred yards apart in the Red River; he heard the beeper sounds which indicated that Rudloff and Blackburn were alive. The area was heavily populated. “The time delay between each ejection strongly indicates that both men were not seriously injured since each was able to eject himself,” says a Navy report sent to Blackburn’s wife and three children.

Rudloff was lucky. Captured immediately, held in Vietnam for the next ten months, he was released in 1973 with the other American POWs during Operation Homecoming. At his debriefing Rudloff said that the North Vietnamese had several times assured him that they had also taken Blackburn prisoner. But Blackburn, dead or alive, has never returned to the United States.