James B. Stockdale
Personal Information
Description
James Bond Stockdale (December 23, 1923 – July 5, 2005) was a United States Navy vice admiral and aviator awarded the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War, during which he was a prisoner of war for over seven years. Commander Stockdale was the senior naval officer held captive in Hanoi, North Vietnam. He had led aerial attacks from the carrier USS Ticonderoga (CVA-14) during the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. On his next deployment, while Commander of Carrier Air Wing Sixteen aboard the carrier USS Oriskany (CV-34), his A-4 Skyhawk jet was shot down in North Vietnam on September 9, 1965. He served as President of the Naval War College from October 1977 until he retired from the Navy in 1979. As Vice Admiral, Stockdale became the President for The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina. Stockdale held this position from 1979 to 1980. Stockdale was a candidate for Vice President of the United States in the 1992 presidential election, on Ross Perot's independent ticket.
Books
In love and war
"This is the true story of Jim Stockdale, a navy fighter pilot shot down and taken prisoner during the Vietnam War; and his wife, Sybil, who, back home in California, carried on a valiant fight on behalf of her husband and all other POWs during the eight years of his imprisonment. Vice Admiral Stockdale entered the fray as a commander in 1964, when the American commitment totaled about 16,00o men, and left it in 1973, when the number was about the same. In between, however, our commitment had shot up to over thirty times that number. The truth about the Tonkin Gulf incidents--and how they precipitated our huge investment of treasure and blood--is a story Jim Stockdale has protected for twenty years, almost eight of them at great risk in a Communist prison. Sybil and Jim tell their story in alternating chapters--Jim recounting his experiences in prison during those years; Sybil telling of her struggle to get the U.S. government to acknowledge the inhumane treatment of POWs in North Vietnam and to enforce the terms of the Geneva Convention--all the while raising four sons on her own. ... It will likely contain some surprises for American readers, but nothing is revealed here that is not already known by the North Vietnamese government."--Prologue.