7 Years, 3 Months, and 28 Days: My Vietnam War POW Experience with Porter Halyburton

Professor Emeritus Porter Halyburton speaks to Naval War College students about his POW experience during the Vietnam war March 10, 2021. He spent 7 years, 3 months, and 26 days in the prisons of North Vietnam. It has been just over 5 decades, or half a century, since Lt. j.g. Porter Halyburton and his pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Stan Olmstead, climbed into their F-4B Phantom fighter-bomber and launched on a mission over North Vietnam. This was Halyburton's 75th combat mission of the war, and it would prove to be his last. During a low-altitude run 40 miles north of Hanoi, the plane encountered heavy ground-fire and took a direct hit in the cockpit from a 37-mm anti-aircraft shell. Recognizing that the plane had been critically damaged and the pilot killed, Halyburton ejected from the stricken aircraft. He was soon captured by Vietnamese villagers, and at the age of 24, he became the 40th American flyer to be taken prisoner in North Vietnam. Since no other aviators on the raid saw a parachute, it was assumed that there were no survivors, and Halyburton was classified as killed-in-action.