Suddenly, another member of the 433rd Tactical Fighter Squadron—Satan’s Angels—caught his attention. “Major, we’ve got a communication link to the States,” the man yelled from the hangar. “You want to talk to your wife?”
When the technician patched him through and Shirley Johnson answered the phone, Sam found her slightly upset by a recent letter he’d sent that described the heavy antiaircraft defenses he’d encountered on a recent mission near Điện Biên Phủ in North Vietnam. He did his best to reassure her; it did little good. He should be more careful in his next letter, he thought.
Husband and wife moved on to the more pleasant subject of their three children: Bobby, fifteen; Gini, twelve; and Beverly, nine. They talked about the difficulty of their separation. They’d both volunteered for this lifestyle, but that didn’t make it any easier to bear. Sam promised to send her a tape-recorded message when he returned from the evening’s mission so she could hear his easy drawl. He assured her that he’d fly safely and promised that he’d always love her. The couple said their good-byes, and Sam again confronted his mission.
Sam would always do the job assigned to him—and perform it well. Yet somehow he had become trapped in a ground war, nearly devoid of the air-to-air battles for which fighter pilots like him were prepared. Relatively few North Vietnamese MiGs patrolled the skies; U.S. aircraft had downed fewer than fifteen planes in more than a year of combat. Truck parks, depots, and bridges comprised target lists; Sam worried about surface-to-air missiles and ground artillery, not hostile jets and opposing pilots. Indeed, he missed the old rush of aerial combat.
In 1953, just one year after earning his wings, the twenty-two-year-old novice found himself dogfighting over Korea, flying an F-86 Sabre that he nicknamed Shirley’s Texas Tornado after his new bride. On May 23, Sam and his Sabre knocked their first North Korean MiG out of the sky. Sam emerged from the fight undamaged but nearly out of gas. He climbed to 40,000 feet, then cut his engine and glided back toward his base with a scant 50 pounds of fuel in his tanks—around seven gallons. He relit the engine as he neared the field and burned his last drops of fuel as he taxied to the flightline. Sam received an earful from his commanding officer for nearly running out of gas, but no punishment came—after all, he’d downed the MiG.
After the war, Sam made his way to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, where the air force’s aerobatic team, the Thunderbirds, invited him to become their solo pilot—an honor that no pilot could refuse. Sam, just twenty-six, joined them for the group’s fifth season, demonstrating the capabilities of the F-100 Super Sabre in grand fashion. Sam relished the solo role, especially his show-opening, low-level passes, often performed upside down, just above the ground. He occasionally made the opening pass at supersonic speeds, which thrilled audiences but often shattered glass in the vicinity. Sam loved being a showman, and as lead solo, he could argue the air force had no finer pilot.
Sam Johnson after downing a North Korean MiG and before joining the Air Force Thunderbirds as a solo pilot.
When his tour with the Thunderbirds ended, Sam earned an assignment to the USAF Fighter Weapons School—the air force equivalent of the navy’s future Top Gun program. He also took his skills to Lakenheath Air Force Base in England, where he laid down a challenge to his fellow flyboys. He’d buy a case of beer for any pilot who could outmaneuver him in the sky. Nobody ever claimed his case. Wiping away the Thai humidity on this day in 1966, Sam again wondered how the hell he’d ever become ensnared in a ground war.
* * *
After saying good-bye to his wife, he caught up with his weapons systems officer and backseater, Lieutenant Larry Chesley. Young Chesley did his best to conceal his excitement about flying with a pilot as accomplished as Sam Johnson. Once they arrived at the waiting jet, both men turned their full attention to the preflight check.
As they strapped themselves into the Phantom’s cockpit, Sam and Chesley reviewed their mission one last time. Intelligence had discovered the North Vietnamese using a new road to bring supplies south to Việtcộng guerrillas. Panther One and Panther Two, as their two-plane flight had been designated, were to attack a ferry crossing, then seek out targets of opportunity along the road. No enemy guns, intelligence had reported. Air force pilots called simple missions like these milk runs.
It was 5:30 P.M. on April 16, 1966, when Sam ignited Panther One’s two engines. He fed gas into the combustors and heard the whine of the compressors as their blades spun ever faster, pushing air through the engine. He felt the rumble through his seat. The tower directed Panthers One and Two toward the runway for takeoff. The flight received a final clearance and a friendly “good evening” from the tower. Sam pressed his throttle hard and the big plane responded, speeding down the runway until its wings bit into the air and lifted it off the ground. In his element and in control, the Korea veteran, Thunderbird, father, and husband rushed over the two hundred miles between Ubon and his target.
As he entered North Vietnam, Sam skimmed low over jungles and fields to avoid its air defense radar. While much of the country’s military technology was outdated, North Vietnam’s Soviet-provided air defenses had already downed two hundred American warplanes. Flying above the 17th parallel required all the seriousness and focus the combat veteran could muster.
Still, Sam couldn’t help smiling beneath his oxygen mask as he watched glowing tracer rounds from North Vietnamese small arms harmlessly floating toward his near-supersonic Phantom. Suddenly much larger red tracers streaked upward from the dark ground. North Vietnamese antiaircraft guns had discovered the flight.
“Two, go right!” Sam barked at Panther Two. The duo split to evade the deadly fire. Sam, in Panther One, circled around a nearby hill. Then he put the hostile guns in his sights and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Again he pulled the trigger. Nothing. His gun had jammed. He double-checked the switches and kept his finger on the trigger, all the while trying to track the guns on the ground and dodge the flak bursting around him. Then a vibration pulsed through the Phantom. The jet began porpoising, bucking up and down. Two more hits jarred the plane. Sam looked around and saw nothing but red, white, and orange. Nearly every warning light, including the right-engine fire light, glowed urgently. Sam doused the right engine and gave the left full power. The stick ripped itself from his hand and lurched forward. The Phantom plunged into a hard dive. Sam strained against the pressing g-forces to reach the stick. When he finally grasped it, he found it jammed. He pulled, pushed, and pulled again, but the stick would not yield and the fighter plummeted toward the ground.
“Larry, get out!” the pilot shouted to his backseater. “Repeating—get out!” He heard no response from behind him.
“Larry, get out!” Sam yelled again. Silence answered.
Scarcely five seconds had passed since the Phantom had taken its fateful plunge, but Sam had no time left. He pulled hard on the yellow and black ejection ring, and the seat’s rocket wrenched him from the cockpit. The wind ripped off his helmet and gloves; he prayed it wouldn’t shred his parachute. With immense gratitude, he saw the chute billow open above him. Below, he watched Panther One spiral toward the dark ground. He thought only of Chesley. Moments before the plane crashed into the ground, Sam saw a white chute open below him. He felt relief. Chesley had ejected. Then Panther One exploded. At the Johnson home in Texas, Shirley was on her knees gardening when she heard the sedan pull into the driveway. She looked up to see three figures step out. One was a chaplain. The officials told Shirley that Sam's plane had gone down and only one chute had been seen. The Johnsons entered a long season of uncertainty. They wouldn't hear from Sam for four years.
As he drifted through the night sky toward the dark unknown below, Sam’s mind raced. How did his plane fail him? How did one of the finest combat pilots in the U.S. Air Force get shot down? With a few lucky shells, a North Vietnamese gun battery had smashed his sense of control and confidence. He hoped he had enough left to survive what awaited him on the ground.
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The ground! He shook himself back to the here-and-now; only seconds remained until he would land. He tried to reach the chute’s risers, which would allow him to direct his landing, but his arms wouldn’t work. The ejection had dislocated his right shoulder, broken his left, and fractured his left arm in several places. He looked right. His arm twisted in the wind, hanging completely loose. He attempted to grab it with his left arm but couldn’t. Both arms hung limp and useless; he could barely move his right hand. Helpless, he drifted lower and implored the Almighty for a soft landing; he’d already lost his arms, he couldn’t lose his legs, too. The heavens answered, and Sam touched down gently between the plowed rows of a rice paddy.
A full moon illuminated the well-tended furrows, and as he looked around he saw the outlines of jungle-covered hills beyond the fields. The chatter of antiaircraft guns quickly reminded him that a hostile army surrounded him.
Sam knew there’d be no rescue—not this far into North Vietnam, not at night, not with tracers lacing the sky. Were his arms of any use, he might have drawn his .38 pistol or raised Panther Two on his radio. While neither would have significantly improved his situation, they would at least have provided some comfort. Instead, he could only sit there, his arms flailing uselessly every time he tried to use them.
Within minutes, two figures attired in loose dark clothing materialized on the field’s edge. They came straight at Sam, one brandishing a pistol, one holding a machete. He thought his short stay in North Vietnam would end with a beheading, but instead of decapitating him, the two men used their machete to free him from his parachute. He discovered that he couldn’t stand. His legs jellied and momentarily seemed as useless as his arms. The two men helped him to his feet, then gently pushed him toward the field’s edge. They made no move to smash his radio or confiscate his pistol. They seemed genuinely kind, and a new, crazy thought flashed through his mind. They would rescue him! They would take him down hidden jungle trails and stow him away on canoes until he reached some secret extraction point. In his condition, the trek would prove taxing, but he would survive. He’d end this mission wrapped in the crisp sheets of a hospital bed, warm, with his broken arms set and mending at his side. He’d have a phone call with Shirley, the promise of another mission.
With adrenaline flowing through his bloodstream, Sam charged across the rice paddies with his two presumed saviors. The moon lit the scene: two quick-moving Vietnamese followed by a loping Texan, bent awkwardly forward at the waist, trying to hold his useless arms against his body. They entered the woods at a sprint and began climbing—toward rescue, Sam let himself think. They fell into single file along a narrow jungle trail.
A sharp yell suddenly punctured the quiet. Sam’s escorts froze and responded in Vietnamese as they pushed Sam to the ground. His companions began fumbling for his flight vest, radio, and pistol—all of which they had allowed Sam to keep on his person up until that point. A North Vietnamese officer appeared and finished the job with quick efficiency. The officer gestured, and the two black-clad North Vietnamese turned their backs, ran down the hill, and never looked back. Any last hopes of reaching safety disappeared as they fled. They had, either purposely or inadvertently, led Sam into a North Vietnamese Army unit. Soon the entire unit began beating him, their welcome to North Vietnam.
Sam had a fight on his hands—one that would require an entirely different set of resources than those he relied upon as a fighter pilot. As the soldiers tied him to a stretcher, he knew his survival would depend on his will, spirit, and character; the preceding half hour had stripped away everything else.
Sam grew up an only child. With a father and mother who both worked, he learned to fend for himself at a young age and developed a particularly stubborn independence. In high school, he competed in late-night drag races down U.S. Route 75 in Dallas. He ran with a gang called the Lakewood Rats and earned a night in jail for shooting out streetlights. During his fifteenth summer, he found a job stringing Western Union wires across the northern panhandle of Texas. He lived with other linemen in a railroad car and survived as the only boy in a crew of grizzled workers who, on evening visits to local saloons, taught Sam to hold his beer and to acquit himself in a fistfight. The rough Texas upbringing molded him into the young man who would excel in the elite circles of fighter pilots. Now, as soldiers carried him farther into the jungles of North Vietnam, he hoped that his scrappy boyhood preparation would see him through whatever came next. With that thought, he passed out.
He jolted back to consciousness when his stretcher-bearers dropped his litter onto the hard dirt floor of a small hut. His broken shoulders screamed. His eyes adjusted to the dim interior, and he saw a family as well as two armed soldiers. The soldiers glared at him; the family tried to show him compassion. An elderly man approached Sam with a spoon of soup. Sam cringed at the smell. His host insisted. Sam felt obligated to accept the hospitality, and his stomach needed food, so he allowed the man to feed him. He forced down the foul-smelling broth. His second sip made him vomit, and he passed out again.
The next night, several soldiers took him to a larger house on the outskirts of Đồng Hới, although Sam did not know the village’s name. The windows of the house were blacked out with blankets. Inside, he found a dozen locals standing in the main room, partially encircling a man seated at a table. An empty stool waited before him. Once Sam took his seat, the man behind the table began talking. A second man translated. “You are not entitled to military treatment,” he said. “You will be tried by the Vietnamese people as a war criminal … You are a pirate! You are imperialist criminal! You must repent!”
The leader began asking questions. Sam answered each one, “I don’t know.” As the ad hoc trial progressed, Sam’s injuries and fatigue overwhelmed him and he slipped into a defensive unconsciousness. His body fell to the ground and his broken arms erupted with pain, immediately reviving him. A torrent of rifle butts fell upon his body. Then the men—the jury, as Sam thought of them—placed him back on the stool. When the group tired of the fruitless routine, the man who seemed to serve as judge declared, “You are guilty! You have been sentenced to die!”
The words would have terrified Sam had exhaustion and shock not dulled his senses, but when the men ran Sam outside, marched him into the woods, and placed him in front of a fresh trench, the terror came. He peered into the newly dug pit and realized the villagers had prepared it for his body. For the first time, he felt real fear. He turned around to face three soldiers with AK-47s. The riflemen slammed fresh magazines into their weapons. They opened and closed the chambers. On an officer’s order, they placed the guns against their shoulders and took aim.
Sam’s mother had marched him to church every Sunday of his boyhood, but Sam had never really called upon the Lord until that moment. He started praying hard, harder than he’d ever prayed. “Lord, I just need your help,” he asked, not knowing whether his prayers would bring rescue or simply comfort in his final moments. He entrusted his fate to God; he would abide by his will. The officer barked the order to fire. Sam closed his eyes. The soldiers squeezed the triggers of their guns. Sam heard Click, click, click. The soldiers had not loaded rounds; their hammers clicked harmlessly into empty chambers.
Sam let out a laugh; he couldn’t help himself. The soldiers kicked him into the trench and began stomping on him. As their boots and sandals pounded his broken body, Sam knew he would face a difficult road as a prisoner of war—although had he known he would ultimately spend 2,494 arduous days in such captivity, he might have wished the soldiers had used live rounds. Still, from that moment forward, he never feared the North Vietnamese. He would always believe the Lord had protected him that dark night and would never leave his side.
While the Lord may have been with Sam in the woods outside Đồng Hới, Commander Jim Mulligan did not feel his presence when he arrived at the Hanoi Hilton that same spring.
* * *
The forty-year-old naval aviator awakened slowly. With his eyes
still closed, he could imagine he’d only experienced a nightmare. He hoped that when he opened them he would find the clean sheets and secure walls of his bunk aboard the USS Enterprise. Even before he could will his eyelids open, though, he felt the pain and knew he would not awake in his stateroom. His arms were bound together tightly. His entire body throbbed. His head hurt. He reached for it with his conjoined arms. His hands found a sticky lump: blood. When he focused on opening his eyes, he realized someone had blindfolded him. He pulled himself into an awkward crawling position, but he couldn’t feel his hands. He felt ropes biting into his forearms, strangling his wrists. Crawling along with his knees and bound hands, he found an exposed rod. He looped the blindfold’s long end around it twice, then drew it taut with his hands. He finally pulled the cloth over his head. When his eyes adjusted, he saw the concrete cell of a prison. Iron rods barred a large window that looked onto an exterior wall, capped with green glass shards and electrical wires. He spied a sparrow in a tree and, like a superstitious sailor, took the bird as a good omen. He heard the sounds of a city: people, trucks. He surmised that he had arrived in Hanoi. Although he didn’t yet know it, he had specifically arrived in New Guy Village, having become the seventy-first American to check in at the Hanoi Hilton.
Defiant: The POWs Who Endured Vietnam's Most Infamous Prison, the Women Who Fought for Them, and the One Who Never Returned Page 11